A cherrylicious muffin, with a crunchy struesel topping…
As usual, I have been wanting to do some posts but somehow nothing seems to work out. My head gets stuck and then I leave the idea of doing posts. Hehe… We have roughly a little over two weeks and we are taking it slow. The girls wanted to go to Florida but with the news of the virus spreading rapidly, we decided to give the plan a rest. I am thankful that we live in a state which is close to the capital and therefore there are enough of activities to be done in and around, including shopping. Hehe… Most of the days, we have something or the other planned. I am sure I will miss this phase, but I don’t want to think too much about it…
I guess the highlight of the previous days has to be the visit of Meena. She came all the way from Connecticut to meet me, and I was really excited about seeing her. She is my first guest post on the blog and every since we have been in good touch. Even though the time spent was very limited, it felt like we have known each other since long. Blogging friendships have always amazed me, in some way or the other. A thread like food has given me companionship that I will cherish for many years to come…
My sister has a cherry tree right in front of her home. That tree was planted by the previous owner and now it is a nice formidable tree. A few weeks before we landed, it gave her an enormous amount of cherry. It seems it is the first time it bore so much fruit. She made jam with a big batch, made pickle with another batch, and soaked some more in vinegar and salt. She used up some in the black forest cake she baked for us as our welcome dessert and the rest she froze them so that we could eat them once here. However, since HD was here in the initial days and we were mostly out, the cherries had a tough time being eaten. HD loves cherries, but somehow even he couldn’t eat much as he would have liked to.
The cherries then had to be somehow used up, for the fear of them being trashed. That is when she had a little party in her home, I decided to bake muffins for the kids with them. Since cherry muffins have been on my agenda since long, then why not? 😉
My go-to site for baking recipes has always been the King Arthur site. I always refer there first before looking around. I found a perfect recipe that didn’t need much tweaking and was just amazing use of fresh cherries all over. The original recipe used almonds, but I didn’t because I didn’t have them and also, I didn’t want the almonds to steal away the light from the cherries. Hehe… Since I felt that just muffins without frosting would be a boring idea, I decided to top it with some struesel. I always find it to be a nice topping when compared to frosting…
The muffins turned out to be perfect, buttery and soft with intermittent bites of fresh cherry all over the muffin. The struesel prefectly gelled with the muffin. We had a few leftovers after the party, which my sister finished by eating it with her morning cup of coffee. I must say that a cherry bake was more of a motivation after seeing Fami’s super delicious looking cherry cake – if you want to try something different… Off to this simple recipe…
Cherry Struesel Muffins | Easy Cherry Muffins
Ingredients
- 110 gm butter softened
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 eggs large, room temperature
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cup chopped cherries fresh
FOR STRUESEL
- 50 gm butter cold
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup rolled oats
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon powder
- A pinch of salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line a muffin pan and set aside.
- Beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
- Add one egg at a time and beat after each addition.
- Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the milk and vanilla and beat on low speed till just combined. Do not over beat.
- Fold in the cherries. Divide equally into each of the muffin cup.
- For the struesel, cube the butter. Mix the rest of the ingredients and rub using tips of your fingers till they resemble crumbs.
- Sprinkle equally on top of all the muffins.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes till the skewer comes out clean. Cool on a rack and serve warm with milk or for afternoon tea.