Christine's had a way with muffins

For many years, some of the lightest muffins on Cape Cod were made at Christine's Oasis, a bakery in Wellfleet that was sold last winter. You had to wait in line for the berry muffins, which usually disappeared by lunchtime.

Christine's measured and mixed the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in advance. Later these would be blended with butter and eggs for the bakery's confections. Bakers would weigh the ingredients, scooping shovelfuls onto a scale: 100 ounces of flour, 50 ounces of sugar. The dry ingredients went through a sifter, the fine grains of flour forming a pillowy dome in the bowl.

When I worked at Christine's as a teenager, I was often assigned the dry mixes and the sifting. Once, after I'd snapped the lids back onto the containers and gone on a break, Christine stormed after me and had me sift it all again. She could tell instantly that I'd forgotten to sift the baking powder. It was the sort of maddening detail that home cooks shrug off, but which also made Christine's worth the Route 6 traffic.

I tried to make her muffin recipes, but they never tasted as good when I scaled them down. My blueberry muffins have strayed somewhat from hers. I use a minimum amount of sugar and rely on the berries to sweeten the batter. A touch of lemon juice and rind gives the muffins a faint, fresh taste. -- REBECCA DALZELL