Blueberry Muffins and Big Surprises

Last night I baked Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffins after I did my blog post. They turned out wonderful and I got great feedback from everyone that had one. Here's a photo - sorry it's not a better, the lighting is bad and I just took the photo tonight a day after they were baked:

Here's a link to the recipe I loosely followed. I did make a some adjustments to this recipe and would recommend others if you do make it yourself. Suggestions as follows:

• Use 1/2 cup sugar - not a full cup. I used about 3/4 of a cup when I made them. They weren't overly sweet but you could probably do with even less sugar and they would still be fine.
• Cook at maybe 325* for a longer period of time than stated in the recipe (maybe 35 minutes?). I cooked my muffins at 190*C (which is equal to 375*F) and they got browner than I would've liked in less than 25 minutes - and I used frozen blueberries in the muffins so the batter was really cold when they went in. Or you could cover them with tin foil for the first part of baking so they don't brown too early and then take it off for the last 5 minutes or so to get a nice brown top. 
• I made a cream cheese and sugar filling for the muffins. I used maybe 2/3 cup of cream cheese and about 1 Tbsp. of sugar. I mixed together and then dropped a dollop of the sweetened cream cheese on top of each muffin before baking. I didn't worry about pressing it into the muffin batter, just plopping on top, and it worked out just fine.
• I didn't do any cinnamon and sugar topping because I was doing cream cheese instead.
• As a note, the muffins didn't rise that much. I was worried about filling the muffin tins up all the way and thus threw out a bit of batter - I didn't want them expanding too much over the top of the muffin trays and making a mess. This is not something I would worry about - use all the batter.

Have fun baking!

For the big surprise that is to be revealed tomorrow - it is now going to be postponed until early next week. We need help from someone here in Coromandel Town and he is not available until Monday or Tuesday so I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait a few more days. I hope the suspense is building appropriately.

That's all for tonight.

Best!