Fresh Strawberry Muffins

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It’s Officially Strawberry Season!

One of the things I love most about spring is strawberries. Juicy, red, melt in your mouth, yummy strawberries. My daughter was not a fan of solid food when she first started eating big people food. The one exception was strawberries. She would eat them and nothing else. So needless to say she and I are big strawberry fans. This year I’m trying to introduce her to strawberries in other things now that she’s expanded her palate; albeit very slightly expanded it.

My husband picked us up some strawberries on his way home the other day. I didn’t feel like tackling jam this weekend so the question was what was I going to bake. One container we could go through eating them before they went bad, but two I knew we couldn’t. In my Pinterest searching, I found strawberry muffins, strawberry banana bread, strawberry lemon blondies, and strawberry pound cake that looked like the recipes would be dairy free friendly. There were so many more, but not dairy free friendly.

I really wanted to try the strawberry banana bread. However it calls for 3 ripe bananas and we only had 1 left. I’m trying to be better about not making groceries runs for one thing so I figured I’d save that recipe for next and try muffins! I have an amazing blueberry muffin recipe but it didn’t do so hot when I swapped out blueberries for strawberries. So I wanted one strictly for strawberries and found this awesome recipe from Chloe on www.boxwoodavenue.com Please check out her site! I plan to go back and explore more. It is a beautiful laid out site with so many things to look through; she has a mercantile and goats and yeah I could just go on about how cute it is. Go check it out, you’ll be glad you did.

Silicone baking stuff never used to be my thing

I had some silicone muffin liners back when silicone stuff first starting getting big. I hated them. They were a pain to get clean. They smelled horrible and the made whatever I cooked taste yucky too. So I swore off the cute colorful silicone molds and never looked back. Until my sister sent me some for Christmas. I come from a family of people who enjoy cooking and we all have our own way of doing it. I didn’t like silicone. But if my big sister had tried them and enjoyed them enough to send me some, I could give them another try.

Well I gave them a go after Christmas with my blueberry muffin recipe. I was pleasantly surprised when they worked beautifully! No smell, no taste in my muffins, and very easy cleanup. So now I’m sold. These are the Oxo brand. I’ve not tried anything else in their brand but I might here in the future. They fit very nicely in my muffin pans and stack for easy storage. For this recipe you will get 12-18 muffins, I got 18.

I know, get on with it. Y’all want the yummy strawberry recipe

So what am I going to need? Make sure you have the following to get started:

• butter, softened
• brown sugar
• all purpose flour
• sugar
• baking powder
• salt
• eggs
• milk
• vegetable oil
• vanilla extract
• strawberries, 1 cup sliced

We’re going to start with the streusel

You need 2 tablespoons softened butter. Be careful to get it soft enough that when you press on it you leave a decent indentation but not so soft it smushes. Mine got too soft, happens when trying to bake with two kids 3 and under. Just means your streusel will be more smushy than crumbly when you attempt to sprinkle it on your muffins.

Put that butter in a small bowl and grab your 1/8 cup measure. Wait a minute, I don’t have one! Never fear this is why you have a conversion chart nearby. 1/4 cup is 4 tablespoons so 1/8 cup is 2 tablespoons. So get your tablespoon measure out. You want 2 tablespoons lightly packed brown sugar. Dump that in with your butter and then add 1/4 cup flour. Then you want to grab your pastry cutter which looks like the picture below.

If you don’t have a pastry cutter you can use a fork. Honestly for this recipe it’s not a big deal because you’re not mixing up that much stuff. Now when we make pie crust yes you will want this tool. It will make your life much easier. So swirl this thing around, press it down into the butter, and mix up the ingredients.

Yours should look dryer and more crumbly than this. Mine sat while the littlest one refused to nap and got too soft. I could’ve and should’ve thrown it back in the fridge for a bit. But… the day was wasting, the baby was napping, and I was living on borrowed time before he woke up. So onward and forward before the monitor tells me there’s a grumpy boy awake.

Muffin time!

Pull out those strawberries and resist the urge to eat them all! Wash and slice your berries. How thick? Depends on how big you want your berries in the muffins. Recipe says slice so I sliced decently thin. But I didn’t want huge chunks for my toddler to attempt to chew up. You do you and slice them however you like. But remember you’re only slicing up 1 cup of berries. I like each muffin to have a decent amount of strawberries. Bigger berries means less pieces to go around. Smaller pieces work better to give each muffin more berries. Once you’ve got one cup then set them aside for later.

Dry Ingredients

Before we start putting stuff into bowls go turn on your oven! I almost forgot to put this here. I got all the way to putting batter in muffin pans and had to jump back up here. Preheat to 400 degrees. Or if using a convection oven make sure your wire racks are where you want them; moving hot racks before putting in muffins is a pain. Then preheat to 375 degrees for convection.

Grab two decent size bowls for wet and dry ingredients. You won’t need your stand mixture for this one. You need 2 cups all purpose flour. I love my King Arthur Flour. Momma got me to start using to make sugar cookie baking easier and I’ve never gone back to anything else. Make sure to use a spoon and lightly put it into the measuring cup, level it off, and pour it in the bowl… yeah that’s what you’re supposed to do. Because too much flour equal dense yucky muffins. I don’t tend to level many things anymore. Just get it close and don’t heap it.

Now you need: 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. Make sure it’s baking powder, the one that comes in a can. Mix these up and set this bowl aside. Now we’re on to the wet ingredients.

Wet Ingredients

First you need 1 cup milk. We’re still living the dairy free life so it’s almond milk for us. I got the vanilla variety from the store this past time but the unsweet would work just fine too. You could add less vanilla since this has vanilla in it but we like vanilla around here. The small amount in our 1 cup isn’t going to change the taste of our muffins that much so we will leave everything alone.

Add your milk to the bowl and then use that wet measuring cup for the next two things. Pull out your vegetable oil, we always have Mazola oil handy. You need 1/3 cup vegetable oil and pour that in the bowl. Then reuse that dirty measuring cup to crack 2 eggs into; one at a time, and add them to the wet ingredients. Lastly you will add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

It should look about like this

Grab your whisk and mix it all up. My whisk died a horrible death when it was used to mix something that was too dry. I can’t remember now what it was but it didn’t look much like a whisk afterwards. And I haven’t bought a new one yet. So if you’re like me and don’t have a whisk, one of the beaters for your electric hand mixer work just fine. Then add the strawberries in and lightly mix them up.

Now pour one bowl into the other bowl

Be smart about this and pour the smaller bowl into the larger bowl. You want to mix this up so that it is just combined. Lumpy is ok. Scrape the bottom as you mix and make sure you’re not leaving a bunch down there. But don’t overmix this. You’ll have dense muffins and not light fluffy ones. Once you’ve got it mixed up you are ready to fill the muffin liners 2/3 full. If you’re like me and have a hard time doing this then Wilton has a tool for you.

These are called Wilton Scoop It Batter Spoons. Yes I had to look it up because I had no clue what they were called other than a handy dandy helpful muffin tool. I use them all the time and do much better filling muffins and cupcakes with them. Spoons are a way for me to lose half the batter on the cupcake pan. These make sure my batter gets into the liner.

These can still get your liners too full!

Fill up to the bottom of the color. If you fill them up to the top then your muffins will be too full. Yes I’ve learned that the hard way. My cupcakes tend to be a variety of sizes but that’s what icing is for. Hiding my mistakes! So fill up your liners and get ready to smell strawberry muffins cooking!

Don’t forget your streusel!

Grab that bowl of streusel and sprinkle some on each muffin. It equals out to close to a tablespoon on each one.

Place them in the oven and bake for 15-17 minutes or until the tops spring back up when pressed gently.

I have killed brand new recipes by following the directions and overbaking. You know your oven. If it tends to cook hot then try baking for 10 minutes and taking a peak to see how it’s going. I was leery at 15 minutes because they did not appear done. However when I pressed the top they sprung right up so I took them out and hoped for the best. I’m glad I did!

Nice soft, fluffy, warm muffins

Yay for not sticking still! If like me you are attempting this with two small children while your husband is having a guy’s night going shooting and then camping, I highly recommend having an empty dishwasher for quick and easy cleanup! I threw the muffin liners in a sink full of soapy water and came back to wipe them out when I did the supper dishes. **They were ready to be cleaned about 5 minutes after I threw them in there. I just didn’t make it back to the kitchen that fast.**

18 delicious strawberry muffins

Now if you are looking for an adventurous and unique muffin this is not for you. These are a simple sweet strawberry muffin that are very good. If you want to change it up some try lemon extract or juice instead of vanilla extract for a tart kick. I’m not a lemon fan so to me they’re perfect as is. I hope you love them as much as I do. Eliza’s not sold yet. She likes the idea of muffins, but much prefers just straight up berries in a bowl.