Celebrate strawberry season with these buttery, moist strawberry muffins with an irresistible vanilla crumb topping.
June is strawberry season and I am buying berries by the quart! Last Saturday, at the Oak Park Farmers’ Market, I bought 4 (!) quarts of berries for jam, baking, and just eating out of hand. No one in my family can resist local, in-season strawberries.
These berries from farms in nearby Michigan or Indiana are heady with fragrance and bursting with flavor. Grocery store berries shipped from California or Florida are good, but they cannot hold a candle to a farmers’ market – or, better yet, pick-your-own – berries.
But strawberries are pretty fragile, as berries go, so I wanted to use them quickly – before they started to spoil. As it happened, we hosted a little backyard brunch last weekend to celebrate my daughter’s high school graduation.
We had ordered a spread of lox, bagels and cream cheese from our favorite bagel cafe, The Daly Bagel – where my daughter also works – for most of the food, but I thought I needed to round out the menu with some home-baked items.
First, I made an asparagus quiche using – you guessed it – farmers market asparagus. (My go-to quiche recipe, by the way, is from the Tartine cookbook. The secret ingredient? Crème fraîche in the custard.)
But I still felt that we were missing a sweet item, so I decided to make muffins. My first thought was a classic blueberry muffin, but then my eyes fell on the four quarts of strawberries I had just brought home. Surely I could make a strawberry muffin?
Strawberry muffins are not as much of a thing as blueberry muffins and there is good reason for that. It’s so easy to toss blueberries into a batter and because the berries are whole, they are not overly wet and do not bleed into the batter.
Strawberries, on the other hand, need to be sliced or diced before adding them to a batter – extra work – and then you have to fold them into the batter very carefully. The danger is that the strawberries will get crushed or bleed into the batter.
But don’t give up on strawberry muffins just yet! They are worth a little extra work especially in strawberry season. The solution to the fragility of the berries is not to fold them into the batter, but rather to layer them in the muffin tin. In other words, fill each muffin cavity halfway with batter, add sliced strawberries, top with more batter and then finish with another layer of sliced berries. This way, the berries won’t be crushed or bleed into the batter.
It is not quite accurate to say that I “finish the muffins with another layer of sliced berries.” In truth, I top these muffins with a vanilla streusel that is so good, I make it in big batches and store it in the freezer so I have some on hand at all times. Listen, you never know when you’re going to have a streusel emergency.
This recipe is actually a bit of Franken-recipe, meaning I have pieced it together from a few different sources. The muffin batter owes a large debt to the Master Muffin Recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. I am always impressed with recipes from that site, which are clearly well-tested and always work out.
The vanilla streusel comes from one of my favorite all-time baking books, Rustic Fruit Desserts, which in my opinion is a classic and belongs in every baker’s collection. So credit to those two sources for my inspiration. Combining the muffin recipe with the streusel recipe and adding strawberries? That was me.
And the results are definitely worth talking about. These muffins were a huge hit at the graduation party and as soon as we finished the first batch, I promptly made another.
These muffins will be in my regular rotation as long as strawberry season lasts. And maybe even beyond: the muffins actually freeze quite well. Just let them cool completely, wrap the muffins individually in plastic and freeze them in a single layer until hardened. Once the muffins are frozen solid, you can pack them into a freezer bag for long-term storage.
So, let’s make strawberry muffins a thing, shall we? Blueberry muffins are just so…predictable.
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes
- 1 TB vanilla extract
- 1 3/4 all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
- 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup sour cream (may substitute plain Greek yogurt)
- 1/4 cup milk
- 2 cups sliced strawberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425. Line a muffin tin with paper muffin liners. (I recommend doubling the liners.)
- To make the streusel, combine all of the ingredients in a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Transfer the streusel to a gallon freezer bag and place in the freezer while you make the muffins. (This recipe makes about 2 cups of steusel, more than you need for the muffins. Store the remainder in the freezer for up to 3 months.)
- Make the muffins: whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
- Place the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl. Cream the butter and sugars on medium-high speed using the paddle attachment (or a handheld mixer) until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.
- Add the eggs one a time and mix on medium speed until well incorporated. Add the vanilla extract and sour cream and continue to mix until the batter is smooth.
- Add the flour and mix in on low speed followed by the milk. Mix just until the flour is incorporated. Do not overmix. The batter will be thick.
- Place a scoop of batter in the bottom of each of the lined muffin cups. Top with sliced strawberries. Add another scoop of batter to each muffin cup on top of the strawberries and top with the remaining strawberries. Sprinkle approximately 1/2 tablespoon of streusel on the top of each muffin.
- Bake at 425 for 5 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 and bake for another 18 to 20 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out clean.
- Remove the muffin tin to a cooling rack. Allow the muffins to cool in the tin for 5 to 10 minutes before removing and them to the rack.
- Serve warm or at room temperature. Muffins are best the day that they are made. (Muffins can also be frozen. See instructions in the post.)
