Normally, I don't like to bake with berries because I would rather eat them. There's nothing better than fresh and juicy blueberries, raspberries and strawberries! When I saw that strawberries were on sale, I picked up a few boxes and ate an entire one myself, saved the other one for my family (ok, this sounds bad, but they're not big fruit eaters.. I'm not a hog..) and used part of another box to make strawberry muffins! At first, I was going to make the strawberry cupcakes from Sprinkles, but Steph of Steph Chows, who has been on a muffin kick lately inspired me to make strawberry muffins. Plus, I had one container of strawberry yogurt that needed to be used so it was perfect. I was going to make her recipe because I've never made muffins that were truly low in fat or healthy even though I generally like to cut butter and sugar where I can. Then I realized I didn't have apple sauce so I adapted a recipe from Cook's Illustrated. I made Steph's topping, but subbed the slivered almonds for flour because I didn't have any. I really liked how light the topping was. With less butter, it doesn't have its usual buttery and crunchiness, but when it comes to streusal/crumbs, too much butter makes me feel like I'm eating chunks of butter so I really liked her recipe!
Topping
Adapted from Steph Chows
1 tbsp slivered almonds (I used 1 tbsp flour)
2 tbsp firmly packed brown sugar
1 tablespoons whole wheat flour
3/4 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/4 cup uncooked regular oats
Rub butter into flour, sugar. Add oats and mix together.
Strawberry Muffins
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated, original can be found on Basically Baked
(I made a half recipe so these are the ingredients divided by 2 and got 11 muffins)
1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp butter, melted
2 tbsp oil
100g container of yogurt (I used strawberry for extra strawberry flavour) + enough milk to make 1/2 cup liquid
1 cup sliced strawberries
1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Grease muffin pan
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl.
4. Whisk sugar and eggs together until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined.
5. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and flour mixture until just moistened (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not overmix.)Fold in sliced strawberries
6. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin pan (I used an Oxo large cookie scoop = 3 tbsp)
7. Sprinkle topping on top of muffins
8. Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17-19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.
