{"id":171,"date":"2013-06-04T11:57:27","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T15:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/?p=171"},"modified":"2014-06-13T15:12:22","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T19:12:22","slug":"imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/04\/imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery\/","title":{"rendered":"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I had almost 1 cup of fresh NJ blueberries leftover from the weekend. Past experience indicates blueberries do NOT make good margaritas, so it seemed I needed to go in a solid direction. I saw a delicious recipe on a blog I follow, but true to form, I didn&#8217;t have enough blueberries to make the full recipe (nor a lemon, nor the brown sugar). So I did what I usually do &#8212; make a substitution or two.<\/p>\n<p>Generally when I deviate from a recipe, it&#8217;s not so much that I feel the need to IMPROVE upon it, but rather, I&#8217;m missing one or more ingredients. Sometimes it&#8217;s a home run, sometimes just a lame imitation. I think this one is a good solid double. We&#8217;ll see what the Culinary Guinea Pig says \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Since I was a hair light on blueberries, and didn&#8217;t have the brown sugar to make the streusel, I looked around for something to amp up the flavor alongside the blueberries &#8212; and found the bottom of a bag of crystallized ginger in the top of my pantry. It was the perfect POP of flavor that I was looking for &#8230; I hope you agree!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blueberry Ginger Muffins<\/strong>, adapted from <a title=\"Lemon Blueberry Streusal Muffins\" href=\"http:\/\/www.heatherchristo.com\/cooks\/2013\/05\/27\/lemon-blueberry-streusal-muffins\/\">Heather Christo Cooks&#8217; Lemon Blueberry Streusal Muffins<\/a><\/p>\n<p>1 1\/4 cup flour<br \/>\n1 1\/2 teaspoon baking powder<br \/>\n1\/2 teaspoon salt<br \/>\n2 &#8211; 3 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger<br \/>\n1\/4 cup canola oil<br \/>\n1\/2 cup granulated sugar<br \/>\n1 egg<br \/>\n2 tablespoons bottled lime or lemon juice<br \/>\n1\/2 cup buttermilk<br \/>\n1 cup fresh blueberries<\/p>\n<p>Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prepare 10 standard muffin cups with paper liners (have one or two extra liners just in case).<\/p>\n<p>In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt (I like to use the <a title=\"Kitchen Aid Whisk for my stand mixer\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kitchenaid.com\/shop\/-3\/-%5BK45WW%5D-400009\/K45WW\/\">whisk <\/a>from stand mixer as a hand whisk for this). Toss in the ginger pieces and use your fingers to ensure they are separated and lightly coated with flour. Set aside.<\/p>\n<p>In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle beater, mix the oil, sugar, egg, and citrus juice until well combined.<\/p>\n<p>STOP mixer. Dump in half of the dry ingredients and mix on low until incorporated.<br \/>\nSTOP mixer. Add the buttermilk and mix on low until incorporated.<br \/>\nSTOP mixer. Add the second half of the dry ingredients and mix on low until incorporated.<\/p>\n<p>Remove the bowl from the mixer stand and fold in the blueberries by hand.<\/p>\n<p>Fill the lined muffin cups about 2\/3 full of batter. Bake the muffins at 375 degrees for 12 minutes. Rotate the pan and cook another 4 to 6 minutes until light golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (or with only a few crumbs).<\/p>\n<p>Makes about 10 muffins.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/2013-06-03-20.24.13.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-172\" alt=\"SAMSUNG\" src=\"http:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/2013-06-03-20.24.13-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Source for Om nom nom nom\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cookie_Monster\">Om nom nom nom<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I had almost 1 cup of fresh NJ blueberries leftover from the weekend. Past experience indicates blueberries do NOT make good margaritas, so it seemed I needed to go in a solid direction. I saw a delicious recipe on a blog I follow, but true to form, I didn&#8217;t have enough blueberries to make [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/2013-06-03-20.24.52.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ImYM-2L","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellematlack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}