Irishbaby and I went to the fruit farm yesterday and picked 3lbs of strawberries (well, it was more like 4lbs, because she ate about twice as much as she put in the basket).
I’m pretty sure we can eat 1lb no problem, but I want to bake something with the rest (we’re not strawberry jam fans in this house).
I’m thinking muffins, because I can bring the ones we don’t eat to work. My sister has borrowed my baking cookbook, and the only muffin recipe I have that I trust is for ginger muffins.
Do you think I can just add fresh strawberries and keep an eye on them for the cooking time adjustment?
Do you think strawberry and ginger muffins will work? It’s made with fresh ginger cooked with sugar, not with powdered ginger.
The only strawberry quickbread or muffins I’ve ever made were made with strawberry preserves, not fresh strawberries so I can’t vouch for any of the recipes, but there are a lot of recipes available. The problem with using a fruit like this is its water content, so if you want to create your own recipe rather than use one from the net, you might want to base it on banana bread rather than ginger muffins.
Strawberries are almost nothing but water. Using a lot of them will really change a recipe and they may get kind of disgusting when baked. There’s a reason they are not all that popular an addition (as fresh fruit) to be embedded with baked products.
I make a wonderful strawberry banana bread that would take to muffin shape quite well. Use your favorite banana bread recipe (minus the nuts) and substitute mashed fresh strawberries for half the banana mush called for. It works best with slightly overripe strawberries from the store, but with pick-your-own, they probably have the sweetness that storebought strawberries lack, and anything ripe enough to mash should work fine. I slice the strawberries and then use a potato masher to break 'em up a bit more. I usually leave 'em fairly chunky, not a smooth mash like applesauce. I want to see recognizable bits of strawberry in the final product, but of course you could break them up more, or even use a food processor or blender to make strawberry goo.
They’ll work fine. I throw all kinds of fruit into baked goods, and any kind of berry is delicious.
My go-to fruit muffin recipe is this:
Combine:
.5 cup yogurt,
3 T oil or melted butter
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1 egg
Then combine:
1.5 c flour,
.5 c sugar,
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp grated lemon peel,
1/4 tsp salt.
Mix well.
1 cup fruit (can use frozen - no need to thaw)
Add the wet ingredients to the dried ingredients, mix, add fruit. Stir until just moistened. Spoon into muffin tins & sprinkle each with a little sugar. Bake 400 for 16-20 min.
I just use a blueberry muffin recipe that uses fresh blueberries, and substitute an equal volume of diced fresh strawberries for the blueberries. It always turns out great, but the muffins do not keep well, so I only make them if I know they will be eaten up quickly.