The “Maybe I do like strawberries” Strawberry muffins. Recipe included!

 

I do have some lunches to post…. well, actually they were dinners, but so not to bore you with too many pictures and even more of my usual rambling, I’ve decided to break this post in two.

Now, I’m sure you have seen an occasional strawberry in my tiny princesses lunch boxes. To be honest with you, they are not a tiny princess favorite. Sadly no fruit is. However, I always try to continue to add them to their meals. In the past, (pre bento) my husband and I have never encouraged the girls to try the fruits and vegetable that they didn’t like. Since I’ve started this Bento journey it’s been amazing! Our new rule is that I will always include something in their lunches that they don’t particularly care for, and that they must at least have one bite. This may sound like small to potatoes to families of less picky royalty, but to us this is HUGE. We have a long way to go, but I am so pleased with the progress we are making. ♥

So, on with the muffins…..Earlier in the day I saw a recipe floating around my facebook newsfeed. It was for strawberry muffins and I had every last ingredient on hand. This rarely happens to me so I knew I had to make them right then and there. I did. And they were soooooo good! Even my tiny princesses (who only tolerate strawberries to make their momma happy) gave them 2 thumbs up! Just look for yourself….

Are you drooling yet? I’m telling you… they were SO good!

The recipe that showed up in my newsfeed didn’t seem to show where it originated from so I set off to do some searching. Hey, you’ve got to give credit where credit is due!  I’m not sure I ever actually found the exact original publication of it, but I will include  the recipe here as well the farthest dated link I could find. I also adapted it a teeny tiny bit. Like literally a teeny tiny bit.  If you would like to follow the tiny princess adapted version keep reading….. if you would like to see the place that I found on my search click here.

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla (we used 1 Tbs. We LOVE vanilla around here. Especially the real stuff!)
1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries
3 tsp. sugar for topping
1/2 tsp. cinnamon for topping

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and mix well. We used an electric hand mixer. It worked well.
Sift flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.  Another tiny princess variation… I added in a little extra cinnamon to the dry mix. I figured since it was in the topping I would try to add a dash to the batter. I’m sooo glad I did. It made them almost Snickerdoodle-ish. Yum! So good!  Add flour mixture and milk alternately to butter mixture. Add vanilla. I did this with the electric mixer as well. Your batter is going to be pretty dry. Almost more like a cookie dough rather than a muffin batter. Your first thought will probably be to add more milk. STOP! Don’t do it. Not yet! Trust me. ;) Gently stir in strawberries. If your experience is anything like mine, the juice from your strawberries will help with the dryness of the mix. Now, it’s still going to be a thick batter. It should be somewhere in between the consistency of  cookie dough and cake batter. Not dry. Not runny. Just right. If you still feel like you want to go ahead and add a little more milk now, go ahead. I won’t stop you this time. :) Just want to let you know that we didn’t need to.
Spoon batter into muffin pans.
Combine sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over muffins.
Bake at 400º for 20-25 minutes.
Makes one dozen muffins. We opted out of doing a dozen regular size muffins and were able to do 24 mini muffins and 3 regular sized ones.

I can’t wait to try this with other fruits…. blueberries, blackberries, bananas, ect….. I may even add a couple of chocolate chips some day for a special treat! It’s a really great muffin mix base!