Sunday, January 4, 2009

whole wheat strawberry-orange muffins.


We have a freezer full of delicious strawberries we picked last June. We have been working our way through them for desserts and smoothies - but there is something extra wonderful about the color, taste and smell of strawberries once January hits. I opened the bag today and the smell was spectacular. Yum.

I used this basic muffin recipe for the base, but tweaked it a bit to add additional liquid so that I could use whole wheat flour rather than all purpose white flour. By using the juice of a mandarin, I got that extra liquid as well as a really good flavor boost. The muffins are so good - the flavor is more like a tea bread...not too sweet. But the texture and crumb is all muffin.


I sprinkled unsweetened organic shredded coconut on top before baking. Nice combination with the strawberries.

::whole wheat strawberry-orange muffins::

ingredients::
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup turbinado (granulated) sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup milk (room temp)
1/4 cup softened butter
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
zest and juice of one organic mandarin (small orange or clementine would be fine too)
1 1/2 cups roughly chopped frozen strawberries
unsweetened shredded organic coconut (optional)

directions::
Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.

In a second bowl, beat together the milk, butter, vanilla, and eggs until creamy. Squeeze in the juice and add the zest.

Toss your chopped frozen strawberries (not cut too small, but not whole) into the flour. Turn to coat. Putting the fruit in the flour first will help keep it from sinking to the bottom during baking.


Pour the wet ingredients into the dry. Lightly stir to incorporate. Do not overmix. Let the mix sit a few minutes.

Fill paper muffins cups or a lightly greased muffin tin about 2/3 full. Sprinkle on coconut (optional). Put in the middle rack into your pre-heated oven. Bake about 15-20 minutes...until done.

Makes about 18 normal sized muffins.


If you use normal all purpose flour (and not whole wheat), leave out the mandarin juice (keep the zest if you like) or the batter may be too thin.

10 comments:

Elisabeth Black said...

Those look so good. I'm envious of your strawberries.

Rhonda said...

Those do look delicious! I'm justlearing about cooking with whole wheat and I have a wheatgrinder and supply now so if you have any other tips or recipes or helpful websites please send them my way! thx!

Anonymous said...

Looks delicious.
I miss whole wheat muffins.

Lisa Anne said...

Those strawberries look so divine! We have been pulling out berries from the freezer this week and it has felt like a little bit of summer in our kitchen. Amelia said she felt rich knowing there are berries in the freezer. Maybe next year she will help a lot more with the picking, now that she truly understands how lucky we are to have all this food put up for the winter.

Gwen Buchanan said...

Oh lovely recipe Denise.. YUMM, I have all the ingredients too... Time for me to dig into our frozen strawberries... wonder how raspberries would be in this.. You are an inspiration... Thank you!!

Anonymous said...

Look yum. I've been looking for a good spelt muffin recipe have you stumbled over any? I don't mind texture weirdness but Others do.

Two Flights Down said...

The muffins look marvelous! If only I had an oven...

Leanne Pizio said...

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Leanne

Gwen Buchanan said...

These are fabulous muffins, Denise.. delicious and light.. I added a banana and exchanged the strawberries for raspberriesc cause that's what I had lots of... worked out great... they didn't last long! thanks for the recipe!!

Kelsey said...

Can you use yogurt instead of milk?