Blueberry Angel Muffins

Thumbing through The Perfect Finish Cookbook . . . is a thrill for the senses.

The Author – Bill Yosses, is the executive pastry chef at the White House.

The pictures are amazing and I found myself dog-earing half the book!

The Blueberry Angel Muffins stopped me in my tracks.

Is it a muffin or cake?

For breakfast?

They are fruit filled, fat free, light & delicious.

They still taste like CAKE.

Angel Food Cake . . . is one of our favorites, so they certainly didn’t hang around the kitchen very long.

If you have a lot of extra egg whites lurking in your fridge, you could make Macarons or these muffins.

You can actually make a really great dessert as well.

Cut the muffins in half and top with strawberries and this yummy fruit dip.

Sooooo good!

Before you begin whipping all those whites, make sure that they are at room temperature.

Your bowl and whisk must be very CLEAN as well.

You can opt to use papers, but I chose not to.

I figured that all that edgy goodness would get stuck on the paper.

I didn’t remove them right away either.

You know how you invert an Angel Food Cake on a bottle or other?

Well . . . I decided to just stand my tins up for a while, so that the muffins wouldn’t sink.

Who knows . . .

They looked pretty darn good, but I still lost some of that edgy stuff.

You don’t grease an Angel Food Cake Pan . . . and I didn’t grease my muffin tins either.

Still . . .Who knows . . . you’ll have to decide.

Either way, you will eat them and enjoy each bite.

These tins are the very large muffin size – I got 12 large muffins.

If you look closely at the first picture, you will also see a few Muffin tops.

There you have it.

You can have CAKE for breakfast.

It says so in the book!

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BLUEBERRY ANGEL MUFFINS

Origin:  The Perfect Finish Cookbook

Ingredients

• Nonstick cooking spray, for the muffin cups
• 2/3 cup cake flour (2.67 ounces, 76 grams)
• 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar (2 ounces, 57 grams)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (1/25 grams)
• 1 1/4 cups blueberries (6.5 ounces, 185 grams)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (8 grams)
• 8 large egg whites  (7 ounces, 200 grams), at room temperature
• Pinch of cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar  (3.5 ounces, 99 grams), plus 6 teaspoons additional for sprinkling
• Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven.  Lightly grease a standard size muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray, or use ungreased paper muffin cups.
2. Sift the cake flour, confectioners sugar, and salt onto a piece of parchment or waxed paper and set aside.  In a small blow, toss the blueberries with the vanilla.
3. In a clean bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar on med/low speed until frothy.  Add 1 tablespoon of the granulated sugar and beat at medium until soft peaks form.  Beat in the remaining granulated sugar, and raise the speed to high.  Beat until stiff peaks form.  While the eggs are beating, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
4. When you have stiff peaks, stop the machine and remove the bowl.  Immediately sprinkle the dry ingredients and lemon zest over the egg whites and fold in with a rubber spatula, working carefully to avoid deflating the whites.  Fold in half of the blueberries.
5. Divide the batter among the muffin cups so that each is two thirds full.  Top each muffin with a few more blueberries and sprinkle each with 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar.
6. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven, and place on the center rack until the muffins are golden and a cake tester inserted comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes.  Remove the muffins from the tins soon as they come out of the oven and transfer them to a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes.

My Notes:  I did not use papers, but lightly greased the muffin tins.  After they came out of the oven, I propped the tins up, and let them cool….so that they didn’t sink or deflate.  When I removed them, I placed them on a wire rack.

Make sure your egg whites are room temperature before beating.  You mixing bowl and whisk must be very, very clean.  The meringue should be beaten stiff…..It could hold up a coin on it’s surface!

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