Strawberry Muffins

These Strawberry Muffins are light, fluffy, and fruity. With a double doze of strawberries in form of berries and strawberry syrup. Perfect way to celebrate summer season!

Yes, it’s official, I’m all about strawberries in the last few weeks. Funny thing is that I actually don’t like strawberries that much,  but it seems like a shame not to use them at this time of year. So, it’s strawberry cakes, cookies and muffins in my kitchen.

Today I even baked a savoury Blue Cheese and Pecan bread, but instead of using pears as the recipe calls for, I used strawberries. And the bread was absolutely delicious and very summery.

What can I say about these muffins? I’ve made them a few times already and they were a hit at last week’s baby shower too. Yes, there are a lot of baby showers in my life right now.

These muffins are light and fluffy and the texture is closer to cupcakes actually. They are very fruity and they have an interesting and unusual ingredient in the batter – strawberry jam or strawberry syrup!

You can make these with different fruit and jam/syrup combo too. As always, I feel like an tiny splash of my favourite Orange Oil makes them absolutely elegant and a little bit mysterious, but it’s totally optional.

This recipe is once again adapted from one of Joanne Fluke’s murder mystery books. Some of her recipes are totally not my style with too much pre-cooked, frozen ingredients like juice concentrates and condensed soups.

But some are really good! I usually mess up with them just a little bit to adjust flavours to my tastes and ingredients to my liking, but her ideas and basics are quite good.

Strawberry Muffins

about 18-20 medium sized

Butter, melted – 1 stick
Greek Yogurt, plain – 1/2 cup
Sugar – 2/3 cup
Egg – 2 large
Cinnamon – 1/2 teaspoon
Salt – a pinch
Baking powder – 2 teaspoons
Strawberry syrup – 1/2 cup (See note!!)
Flour – 2 cups + 1 tablespoon
Strawberries, sliced – 1 cup (about 8 strawberries)

• Preheat oven to 375F.
• Place sliced strawberries in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of flour and mix, so that flour coats the berries. It’ll help with distributing the fruit throughout the batter.
• In a large bowl, add melted butter, sugar, eggs, cinnamon and salt. Mix well.
• Add flour and baking powder and mix.
• Add strawberry syrup and mix thoroughly.
• Add strawberries and mix to distribute them all throughout the batter.
• Line muffin pan with paper liners and scoop the batter filling tins 2/3.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the are cooked through.

NOTE: Original recipe called for 1/2 strawberry jam + 1/2 cup milk for the liquid. First time I made these muffins, I used half jam (that’s how much I had left), half syrup and reduced the amount of milk. Second time I made these I used all syrup and no milk. There’s a subtle difference in texture, but not much. Strawberry jam would make the batter nice and pink, so it’ll be very pretty.

These is the syrup that I used. My mom gave it to me a few months ago and I didn’t know what to do with it until I decided to make these muffins.