Most people enjoy a nice muffin. I do, though as an afternoon snack, with a cup of tea, rather than for breakfast as many people do. But whenever you eat them a nice fruit filled one will taste so good. Using buttermilk in the muffins does help to make a lovely soft-textured treat.
For this recipe, which, as with most muffins, is very easy to make, I decided to use up some strawberries I had in the fridge. Almost any fruit could be used, and even frozen berries though they would need slightly longer to bake through.
Although the recipe calls for buttermilk, if that isn’t available milk can be used. But an even better substitute would be a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar added to it. Then if that mixture is left for about 10 minutes the milk will begin to curdle into a great substitute for buttermilk.
My muffins turned out very well indeed. They were lovely and soft, as well as moist and full of flavour. They didn’t last too long either.
For such a quick and easy recipe these muffins are so good.
Best eaten within a day they can easily be refreshed by a quick re-heating too.
Ingredients:
- 250g(1 3/4 cups) strawberries chopped into pieces( a lesser amount will be fine too)
- 325g(2 cups + 2 tbsp) plain flour,based on 150g per cup.
- 150g(3/4 cup) caster sugar, or granulated
- 120ml(1/2 cup) flavourless oil, or melted butter
- 240ml(1 cup) buttermilk
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 medium egg(large in USA)
- finely grated zest from one lemon, or orange
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 190C/170C Fan/375 F.
- Line a muffin tin with paper cases, or grease the tin.
- In a large bowl place the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar and zest.
- Stir around to get those ingredients combined.
- Add the chopped strawberries and gently stir to get them well mixed in.
- In another bowl place the buttermilk, egg, oil and vanilla extract.
- Whisk the wet ingredients together until well combined.
- Pour the wet mixture into the dry and gently fold in until all the dry ingredients are incorporated into the wet.
- Spoon the mixture evenly between the paper cases.
- Bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops of the muffins are a nice golden brown and feel spring to the touch. A test with a skewer in the centre should be mainly clean, this test is not great since the strawberries will still be very moist.
- Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.