Blueberry Pumpkin Seed Muffins

My son is so much like me in so many weird little ways. When I was a child, I would eat the same breakfast every day for months on end and then one morning, without warning, I would come to the table and reject my breakfast and ask for something completely different. That would become the new breakfast for the next undetermined amount of time until I would do it again, making my poor mother crazy. The Kid does this as well and he now has decided that his new favourite breakfast is a muffin and a fruit smoothie. For the last year or so, he has eaten one piece of french toast with a glass of soy milk almost every single morning. On occasion I can talk him into eating eggs but he is a creature of habit when it comes to his morning meal on school days.



Since I had a whack of blueberries that were earmarked for the freezer (for his highness's morning smoothie) ,  it made sense to use some of them in a muffin. There are a few changes from the Smitten Kitchen recipe I used - brown sugar replaced the white sugar, some white whole wheat flour that I bought the last time I was at Wegman's went in there and a nice handful of pumpkin seeds for good measure.

If you are looking for a really sweet, cake disguised as a muffin, this isn't for you but they will make the perfect breakfast muffin - not too sweet, just enough berries in there, a nice bit of crunch from the seeds and a nice punch of lemony goodness. Fit for a Prince who is too much like his crazy mother for his own good.


Blueberry Pumpkin Seed Muffins
adapted from perfect blueberry muffins at smitten kitchen

5 tbls softened butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup greek yogurt
zest from a lemon
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup AP unbleached flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch kosher salt
about 1 cup fresh blueberries
about 1/3 cup toasted pumpkin seeds and more for sprinkling on the tops

Preheat the oven to 375F

Cream the butter and brown sugar together until it's nice and fluffy and then add the egg and beat a while longer. Next add in the yogurt and the lemon zest and mix well.
In a different bowl, put the flours, the baking powder, baking soda and salt in and whisk it for a minute to make sure it's fully mixed.

Add half of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix it together until the flour disappears and then add the other half of the flour and mix until just incorporated you don't want to over mix and it's quite thick. Then fold in the blueberries and the pumpkin seeds.

Put liners into ten muffin cups in a muffin tin and divide the dough between them. Sprinkle a few pumpkin seeds on top of each one before popping them in the oven to bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a skewer stuck into the muffins comes out clean.