Eat cake for breakfast with these blueberries and cream muffins bursting with blueberries and white chocolate chips from Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi.
At the start of the pandemic, Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi began Bake Club, a daily baking project streamed live to all of her Instagram followers. It’s been going on now for over 50 days and she’s made everything from jam to gummies to bars, cookies, and cupcakes with hundreds of fans baking alongside her each day. And on the day I joined her on Instagram, she made Blueberries and Cream Muffins.
How Bake Club Works: Blueberries and Cream Muffins Edition
The evening before Bake Club, Tosi posts a few images on her Instagram that show the ingredients required for the next day’s bake. There’s usually a ‘required photo’ meaning you need these ingredients for tomorrow’s Bake Club along with a second photo that’s more of a grab-bag, choose your own adventure, that compliments the required ingredients in photo one.
On the day of Bake Club, Tosi starts with a quick hello, chats about her day before, and introduces a Spotify playlist that accompanies the day’s baking adventure, which is usually playing in the background while Tosi bakes. About 10-minutes into Bake Club, Tosi reveals what she’s baking, and on the day I chose to bake with her, she was baking muffins, stating that she was craving Milk Bar’s famous Blueberries and Cream cookies so she decided to do a play on them by making Blueberries and Cream Muffins.
Check out my other Milk Bar reviews here: Celebrating 31 Years with Momofuku Milk Bar Birthday Cake and the famous Milk Bar ‘Crack’ Pie
Tosi then takes her viewers on a whirlwind tour of her kitchen while she gathers all the necessary ingredients for the bake and then kicks off the actual recipe, walking Bake Club attendees step by step through measuring, mixing, substitution options, and finally shipping the baked good into the oven to bake. That’s when she signs off, tells everyone to post photos of their bake once it’s complete and Bake Club wraps for the day.
All in, the day I attended Bake Club for the Blueberries and Cream Muffins, the session took about 40-minutes — which got me up to the point of placing my muffins into the oven. For the actual baking part, I was on my own, left with the rough timing Tosi supplied before signing off.
Why I enjoyed baking Blueberries and Cream Muffins with Christina Tosi
I put off baking with Bake Club for the longest time because I thought the session would be elementary and I consider myself a pretty confident baker. However, one day I had some extra time on my hands and decided ‘why not’ and I was pleasantly surprised how much fun I had at Bake Club.
Christina Tosi has a really fun personality, she’s spunky, funny, and appears genuine — she’s hard not to like! I also enjoyed the fact that she didn’t dumb down baking. Tosi emphasized the science of baking, thoroughly explaining why the muffin recipe should use a light, neutral oil rather than butter (because of the milk fats + water in the butter wouldn’t provide the proper muffin texture) and how the addition of apple cider vinegar reacts with the baking soda and baking powder to provide height to the muffin when baking.
Looking for Tosi’s Blueberries and Cream Muffins Instagram Live video? Find it here!
The Milk Bar handle was also active in chat during the Bake Club session, offering advice to those commenting or asking questions during the session which made it even more interactive since Tosi herself wasn’t directly responding to chat inquiries since she was focused on leading the baking lesson.
I also enjoyed that Tosi gave numerous substitution options so regardless of what viewers had on hand, they’d be able to create a cohesive flavor profile. I loved some of her suggestions such as cornmeal and strawberries, olive oil and orange, blueberries and honey. She really made baking approachable for the novice and educational for those of us more experienced in the kitchen.
I would definitely bake again with Christina Tosi during Bake Club!
The End Result
While Tosi did provide options to change up her Blueberries and Cream Muffins, I followed it almost exactly, only substituting frozen blueberries in place of fresh since that’s what I had on hand. The end result was a ridiculously delicious muffin. It was basically a muffin that served my own favorite mantra — #EatCakeForBreakfast.
This muffin browned beautifully with a nice rise and a crisp, crunchy muffin top that left me wanting to peel the tops off each and eat them all myself. The flavor was most definitely blueberries and cream, stuffed with juicy blueberries, white chocolate chips, and a hell of a lotta sugar from the chocolate-sugar combo (thus, cake!). I also enjoyed that the muffin was light and fluffy and not overly greasy or crumbly like some muffins tend to be.
Overall, it was delicious and will serve as a base muffin recipe I plan to use in the future with other flavor combinations.
So tell me, have you done any baking with Christain Tosi during the pandemic? What did you make?
- 1 egg
- ½ cup sugar
- ¼ cup milk
- ¼ teaspoon vinegar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- 1 ½ cups flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup frozen blueberries**
- ½ cup white chocolate chips
- Preheat the oven to 375F (I used convection setting) and line a standard muffin tray with 6-9 cupcake liners.
- In a medium-sized bowl whisk together the egg and sugar. Add in the vinegar and stream in the milk. Whisk to combine followed by the vanilla extract and oil. Whisk again to combine.
- Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir with a spatula until just combined.
- Gently fold in the blueberries and white chocolate chips.
- Using a large cookie scoop or a ⅓ cup measuring cup, fill the prepared cupcake liners. Milk Bar stated this recipe made 6 muffins when I followed it I had 9 muffins, with the cupcake liners filled about 80% of the way full.
- Bake the muffins in the oven for 18-22 minutes until tops are golden.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool before serving.
- Store in an airtight container for 3-5 days.