Orange Almond Blueberry Muffins

I haven't been keeping up well with the regularly scheduled (every other Sunday) Baked Sunday Mornings posts from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. Part of it is because these cookbook has more "one-off" recipes that I don't want to make than their other cookbooks do (like last week's mocha fudgesicles, which I did want to make, but I couldn't find popsicle molds anywhere in time), and part of it is because we've been busy/gone almost every weekend since February. But for today's recipe, Orange Almond Blueberry Muffins, I planned ahead.

We had a Muffin Bake-Off at work towards the end of May so I thought, why not look for an upcoming muffin-related recipe on the BSM schedule and make that for the Bake-Off? These orange almond blueberry muffins were the next upcoming muffin, plus a very informal poll at work had concluded blueberry was generally acknowledged as the best muffin variety.

Because I had a captive audience who would provide their unfiltered opinion, I opted to make 3 different blueberry muffin recipes; this one from Baked, one from HonestlyYum and one from Green Kitchen at Home.

These orange almond blueberry muffins did not win the Bake-Off, but they were the best of the three, and they placed fourth overall (out of nine, including one that was a fabulous recreation of the Rebel Within and one other baker's blueberry muffins). In my opinion, and Caleb's, these had too high a ratio of batter to blueberry; they need about 2-3x the number of blueberries to be almost perfect. I'd also steal the blueberry compote swirl and streusel from the HonestlyYum muffins (but nothing else, because I didn't actually like the flavor of the muffin (vegetable oil overpowered everything else), and neither did most of the judges.)

Head over the Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what the other bakers thought of these orange almond blueberry muffins.