Fresh Cherry and Vanilla Oat Muffins
May 22, 2008
Faced with the uphill task of munching through 2kg of cherries donated by cherry growing friends and neighbours, I went in search of a solution. I must say that I am extremely pleased with what I found! I toyed with the idea that foodiephile on the foodari website gave me of making cherry brandy, but having neither a suitably large jar nor (perhaps crucially) any brandy in the house, I put that idea away until next time and kept looking until I found what I was hankering for: muffins.
Everybody likes a moist blueberry muffin and I tried to emulate that in these Fresh Cherry and Vanilla Oat muffins. Personally (yes, I know I’m prone to blowing my own trumpet when it comes to food, just trust me on this one!) I think they are delicious and hope you find the time to make them and agree with me! You may even be lucky enough to have tried one, in which case you can let the other readers know what you thought!
If you don’t have a free supply of fresh cherries to hand, I’m sure drained tinned ones would do the trick, just ease off a little on the milk as I guess the tinned cherries will be quite wet.
The recipe idea came from the CookSister! blog and I have adapted it to incorporate fresh cherries – here you go:
makes 24 muffins
400g of stoned fresh cherries
100g of fine porridge oats
450ml milk
2 sachets vanilla sugar
2 tsp baking powder
225g wholemeal flour
225g white self raising flour
1 tsp salt
300g light brown sugar
2 eggs lightly beaten
10 tbsp sunflower oil
Preheat the oven to 195°C
Add the cherries and oats to a food mixer and blitz for a few seconds (not too long, you still want to have lumps of cherry) add the milk and leave to stand for at least 10 minutes while you prepare everything else. Add all the other ingredients except the egg and oil to a bowl and mix. Make a well in the middle. Add the egg and oil to the cherry, oat and milk and mix. Pour into the flour mixture and stir until just blended – not too much stirring – I read somewhere that this is the key to moist muffins. Fill your muffin cups about 3/4 full and put in the oven for 30 minutes – a skewer through the middle should come out clean when they’re done. Allow to cool on a rack before ripping one open and enjoying it!
I found your blog on Foodari, these muffins look great. I am a huge muffin fan – they are our staple weekend breakfast and I am always looking for new ideas! I love the inclusion of the oats and wholewheat flour to bring the GI down.
they did taste delicious – improved by travelling and eaten on shores of Zürichsee! will try and follow recipe this weekend – previous attempts at muffins have usually resulted in creations ressembling a rather leaden pancake
I was surprised by how light and moist these were – I hope they work out for you the same way!
hi – trying to cope with a glut of strawberries – one advantage of having acquired two cats is that we have not had to share the fruit with blackbirds this year ! however made jam this morning and this evening used the above recipe substituting fresh strawbs for the cherries. discovered too late I’d run out of cake cases – so used greaseproof paper rounds; the muffins were what one might call mini muffins – cooked for only 15mins and the above ingredients gave 4 X 27 of them – plenty for visitors ! They taste fine and are nice & light.
Very glad to hear they also work with fresh cherries! And aren’t they deliciously light and yummy for something so healthy?? Note to self – must make more