My Foolproof Way to Say Thank You Starts with a Bowl of Blueberries

When you have a baby in the South, you get showered with love—sometimes an overwhelming amount. Between the cuddles, tears, and bottles, a brigade of bow-tied boxes and home-cooked meals find their way to your front porch for weeks on end. It's amazing how Southerners show up for each other. But if you're like me and letting people do things for you makes you uneasy, it's always nice to have a simple way to say thank you in your back pocket.

I use my oven to write thank you notes far tastier than any words I could write. Strawberry cupcakes find their way into my dog's travel kit if you're watching her for the weekend, and you better bet I'm bringing the gooiest batch of brownies possible if you've offered to host girls' night. So, as friends started showing up in full force to support me as a new mom, I had to come up with a homemade thank you I could whip up easily between feeds or with a baby in tow.  

These no-fail Bakeshop Blueberry Muffins were just the ticket. Not only were they bursting with flavor, but they also only required two bowls and ten minutes of my time. Though the recipe calls for frozen blueberries, I was fortunate enough to time the bulk of my baking with blueberry season. Whether you grab a bag from the frozen section later in the year or toss in an in-season handful, these muffins boast a blueberry flavor and tender cake that's just sweet enough without venturing into cupcake territory. They earned bonus points for presentation in my book for their domed, sugary top too.

Recipe: Bakeshop Blueberry Muffins

The muffins start as you'd expect: dry ingredients in one bowl and wet in the next. It calls for vegetable oil instead of melted butter, which saves you an extra few punches on the microwave, and stirring by hand (just until mixed) takes away the bother of using an electric mixer. From there it's all about the blueberries. The plentiful amount you fold in guarantees berries in every bite. Add them to the pan, sprinkle them with sugar, and you'll start to realize it doesn't require much to make a muffin worthy of a bakeshop display. I ended up gifting these by the dozen, but I always managed to "forget" a few to keep for myself.