blackberry muffins

Good morning!
It is a crisp, wintery morning and Enya is in the air and Audrey is crawling around the house with an orange in her hand. I decided to make muffins this morning while my dear husband snoozes upstairs. I love baking just because and with no time deadlines or expectations. It is very relaxing. And to be productive in this way in the morning feels...glorious. Not sure why. The sun is rising and I am making a homemade breakfast.

Thought I would pass on the recipe to you...

Blackberry Muffins (a cookbook from Williams Sonoma, our favorite store besides the Spice House)

Topping:
1/3c sugar
3 TBSP all purpose flour
grated zest of 1/2 lemon (I used an orange this morning--you make do, right?)
2 TBSP melted butter
1/3c finely chopped pecans

Batter:
2c all purpose flour
3/4c sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp salt

1 large egg, beaten
5 TBSP melted butter
1 cup buttermilk (if you don't have any buttermilk in the house, you can make this on your own--simply take 1 cup milk, add 1 TBSP white vinegar and let it sit for 5-10min--walah! my husband taught me that one believe it or not.)

2 cups fresh blackberries or 10oz frozen blackberries unthawed (Sam's has blackberries reasonably priced)

Preheat oven to 375F.
Make topping in separate bowl and set aside.
Put all dry ingredients together in large bowl. Use whisk to combine well.
Create a crater in the middle of the dry ingredients.
Pour egg, butter and buttermilk in the middle.

The key to making muffins is to not overmix the batter. Let me repeat. DO NOT OVERMIX THE BATTER! My husband always yells at me (well, not really) for this and is a sharp critic of mixing jobs of muffins. So only use a few strokes to get the dry ingredients incorporated. If there is a little flour poking through, that's okay because you have one more stirring job to do.

Fold in the blackberries using less than 5 strokes.

Spoon into muffin cups.
Top each muffin with topping.
Bake 25-30min. A toothpick inserted in the middle should come out clean.
Pop the muffins out, tilting them on their sides in the muffin pan so that the can cool.
Serve (with more) butter.

Yumm, in the tumm.

[Alina, I want to make these for you and David when I come for a visit. :)]