Strawberries and Cream Muffins---Recipe of the Week.

It's not quite the peek season for strawberries yet and well the ones that are available are not the best. Until you can get those oh so juicy, sweet strawberries of early Summer this is a wonderful way of getting some use for those strawberries that are lest than perfect.

Ingredients

2 Cups AP flour
3/4 cup + 3 tablespoon sugar, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled cut up
1 cup chopped strawberries
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter milk
1 egg
3 oz cream cheese cut into 12 cubes


First things first. Line cupcakes pans with twelve cupcake papers.


Next add the flour, 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl and stir to combine.



Chop up the strawberries. I prefer a small dice.



You will need 1 cup.


Cut up your cold butter while you have the cutting board and knife out.



Cut it in half.


Then in half again.



Then dice it.

Add it to the flour mixture.


Cut the butter in with a pastry blender or two knives. I don't have a pastry blender so I used the two knife method.



The goal is to get the super cold butter all cut into the flour. You shouldn't see any clumps bigger than a pea.



Once that is done add the strawberries and gently stir. Adding the strawberries in before the wet will coat them in flour and prevent them from sinking to the bottom of your muffins.



Next whisk the buttermilk and egg together.


Add to the flour and strawberries.


Stir until just combined. The mixture WILL be LUMPY!! It will be way lumpy this is OKAY. If you over stir the mixture you will have tough yucky muffins. Trust me!


Divide batter evenly between 12 muffin tins. I found that 1/4 cup batter in each was just about right.

Cut your cream cheese into 12 cubes and roll in sugar.

Put one cube of cream cheese into each muffin, but not all the way down in.


Sprinkle the tops with sugar and bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes.

Let cool about 10 minutes before removing from the pan. Store these muffins (once fully cooled of course) in the refrigerator. I find they are the tastiest if you microwave them for about 15 seconds after they are refrigerated.

Strawberries and Cream Muffins

2 Cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoon sugar, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled, cut up
1 Cup chopped strawberries
3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons buttermilk
1 egg
1 (3oz) pkg. cream cheese cut into 12 cubes

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease bottoms of 12 muffin cups or line with paper liners. Combine flour, 3/4 cup of the sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in medium bowl. With pastry blender or 2 knives, cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Stir in strawberries.

2. Whisk buttermilk and egg in small bowl until blended. Gently stir buttermilk mixture into flour mixture just until combined. Divide evenly among muffin cups. Dip cream cheese pieces in 2 tablespoons of the sugar; place in center of each muffin. Press cream cheese until level with batter. (Do not cover the cream cheese with the batter). Sprinkle muffins with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.

3. Bake 20-25 minutes or until light brown and toothpick inserted off-center comes out clean (do not put toothpick in cream cheese). Cool on wire rack 10 minutes. Remove from pan; server warm or at room temperature. Store in refrigerator.

This week....

Look out for these new posts this week. I will be posting step by step instructions for the strawberries and cream muffins as well as how to make your own taco meat (no more of that salt packed taco seasoning packs) and I hope to have May's menus up before the end of the week as well. I am looking for some new summer menu ideas so if anyone has any ideas let me know.

Happy Eating.

Strawberries and Cream Muffins----Review

Alex found a recipe in one of my cooking magazines that he wanted to try. Strawberries and Cream Muffins. I took at look at the recipe and it didn't seem so hard so we made sure we had all the stuff one hand. As it turns out these are really tasty muffins. The cream part is a tiny block of cream cheese pushed into the batter before you bake it. The only problem I had was that he muffins wouldn't stay together. I really think this was because the fresh strawberries compromised the stability of the muffin. Next time we will cut them in smaller pieces to see if that helps. Very tasty though.

Patitsio Review

Tonight we tried something new....Patitsio. Patitsio is a Greek dish. It is a baked pasta dish with both red sauce and bechamel. Basically the bottom layer is a spiced tomato meat sauce and pasta. The top layer is a thick bechamel sauce with Parmesan added in it. All I can say is YUM!! I was a little worried because one of the spices in the meat sauce is cinnamon. A lot of cinnamon. I was sure it was going to be overpowering, but it really wasn't. There was a nice warm after tone to it, but it was perfect. This will definitely be added to our menus...though it may be added to the Winter ones as it has to cook for an hour in the oven.