Sourdough Blueberry Banana Muffins
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter 1/4 lb, at room temperature
- 2/3 cup light brown sugar packed
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup sourdough starter either active or unfed *
- 1 3/4 cups mashed ripe banana about 3 large bananas
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp table salt
- 1 cup wild blueberries
- 3/4 cup chopped nuts—walnuts pecans, almonds—up to you!
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin, or line cups with paper liners.
- Beat butter and brown sugar until smooth and blended. Beat in eggs, one by one.
- Stir in sourdough starter (or yogurt, if using), mashed banana and vanilla. Add baking soda and baking powder and stir well to combine.
- Whisk flour, spices, and salt together and add to the banana mixture.
- Stir in blueberries and chopped nuts. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups, dividing it evenly.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until a tester inserted in one of the muffins comes out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store in a tin for up to five days, or freeze for up to three months.
Notes
The thrill of picking blueberries in the White Pass (apart from the berries) is that you never know when the White Pass and Yukon train might go by. Possibly you have never ridden the train, probably you know a little about the history of the train, maybe you think “meh,” but when the horn bellows its long summons you can’t help yourself.
You pick up your bucket and run to the edge of the cliff to wave madly at the passengers within. “Here I am, there you are, isn’t it wonderful that you are moving and I’m standing still, isn’t wonderful that we are each in our own way traveling?”
When you run into those folks later in the parking lot at Fraser, you with your full buckets, they with their photos and quick impressions, you smile at each other in recognition.
At home, when you bake a batch of blueberry muffins, you remember that moment, those people, and the memory is baked right in.
The nature of travel is such is that on a train or an airplane you might find yourself sitting next to a person from Central America or Japan and become, for the duration of the journey, fast friends. The nature of trade is similar. When you put your newly-picked, cleaned, and bagged berries into the freezer you might run into a clutch of bananas you froze last March. They are thousands of kilometres from the place they were grown and yet, here they are, in your freezer, next to the blueberries.
What comes next is inevitable.
