White Chocolate & Strawberry Muffins

Rainy and gloomy morning? There’s no better excuse to lock yourself in the kitchen and bake muffins! I craved something semi-sweet and simple for breakfast and I took the occasion that I’ve had fresh strawberries and some leftover white chocolate in my pantry.

Also I've turned on my Spotify playlist, full of classic/hard rock songs and just started baking.

This recipe is very simple and pretty quick to do + you can settle the amount of sugar on your personal preferences. I don’t really like excessively sweet muffins, so I reduced the grams of sugar (at least I popped sweet white chocolate in the batter, so I think the final result is right balanced).

INGREDIENTS:

(makes 9 small/medium muffins)

75g caster sugar

90g unsalted butter (softened)

2 medium eggs

180g plain flour (sifted)

30g ground almonds

1 tsp vanilla extract

1,5 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

100ml milk

pinch of salt

75g white chocolate (chopped - you can use chocolate chips as well)

150g strawberries

icing sugar 

METHOD:

First of all, preheat the oven to 175℃. 

Beat the butter and the sugar in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. In another bowl, mix together the plain flour with ground almonds, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, and salt - remember to sift the flour, otherwise you risk to bake sticky muffins with ugly lumps.

Add the eggs + vanilla extract into the bowl with the butter mixture, once at time, still beating. When the eggs are well combined, add milk and finally the flour mixture in 3 steps. Beat until all the flour is well incorporated.

Cut strawberries into small/medium cubes and add them to the batter. Finally pour white chocolate and stir carefully the whole mixture with a spatula or a wooden spoon.

Fill up the paper baking cups to about 3/4 to the way up. Bake for about 22-25 minutes.

I usually pour a little bit of classic crumble on each muffin before I put them into the oven, but this time I didn’t have enough butter to do that, so I just dusted them with a simple icing sugar. Yummy in either way!

Song of the day:  Bob Seger - Old Time Rock And Roll