Make Your Own Muffin Mix

"It was a dark and stormy night" morning and I was absolutely tired of cereal from a box. I needed some sunshine and there was none to be found at that hour on that particular date in January. Granted, I am not ever a morning person, but when the sun hasn't gotten out of bed why in the world should I?

Nevertheless, I trudged into the kitchen in search of breakfast. Nothing was appealing, so I decided to go out on a limb and bake something before nine o'clock a.m. (Not usually a good idea in this house...) I got out my favorite blueberry muffin recipe of all time and proceeded to do just that. I mixed up the dry ingredients. Then I had an epiphany. If I wanted blueberry muffins more often, why couldn't I make my own mix? With help from the pipsqueaks, we got an assembly line going, and in the time it takes to make one batch of fresh blueberry muffins we had the mix ready for nine additional batches.

Photo credit: mconnors from morguefile.com

Sometimes it does pay to get out of bed early!

Here's the recipe we came up with:

Blueberry Muffin Mix
In a quart size ziploc bag, mix the following.
2 c. flour
1/3 c. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1 t. salt
If you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that blueberry is your berry of choice, go ahead and toss in 1 1/2 c. frozen blueberries. If you want to keep your options open, you can always add them later.

On the morning you stumble out of bed and make your bleary-eyed way to the kitchen, mix up the following in a good sized bowl.
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 scant c. milk
1/4 c. melted butter
1/2 t. vanilla

If you want to be a gourmet cook, add 1 T lemon zest or 1/4 t. cinnamon and 1/4 t. nutmeg. I don't recommend mixing all three in there...just sayin.' When it is good and mixed, pull a bag of dry mix out of the freezer and dump it in. Gently, gently stir it until mixed. Scoop it into a muffin tin and bake it for 25 minutes at 375 degrees.