Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Strawberry Walnut Muffins


I've mentioned before that my parents have a farm. Waterberry Farm is a hydroponics farm and we grow all kinds of produce, but mainly strawberries. The strawberries are grown in a hydoponics stacker system using all organic methods. We've got about 6000 berry plants in this year, and we will be picking our first ripe berry any day now. I froze several bags of strawberries last season and I wanted to use them up before the fresh strawberries were ready. We eat A LOT of strawberries. Lucky, I know! With an abundance of strawberries around, I'm always looking for new recipes. I came across a recipe for a strawberry quick bread on Megans Cooking that looked interesting, and I could use my frozen strawberries. In Megan's post she also made a strawberry butter to go with the quick bread. It looked really tasty as well, but I opted to make just the bread. Although it's more like a coffee cake than a bread, in my opinion. Anyway, instead of baking the batter in two loaf pans, I made half the batter into muffins and just one loaf. It made good muffins with a nice texture, although if I make this again, I'll cut back on the cinnamon in the recipe. To me it overpowered the taste of the strawberries somewhat. I think I'd also puree the berries to give more strawberry flavor through out the bread.

Ingredients:

3 cups All-purpose flour

2 cups Sugar

3 teaspoons Cinnamon

1 teaspoon Baking soda

1 teaspoon Salt

1 1/4 cup Vegetable oil

4 Eggs
1 1/4 pound Fresh strawberries; sliced -OR - Unsweetened frozen berries, thawed, drained and coarsely chopped1/2 cup Walnuts, coarsely chopped2 (8-1/2 x 4-1/2-inch) loaf pans

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour the two loaf pans. Mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the oil, eggs, strawberries, and walnuts. Beat until the dry ingredients are just moist. Pour into the prepared loaf pans and bake for 1 hour. The breads are done when they start to come away from the sides of the pan and an inserted wooden pick comes out clean.

For the muffins I cooked them 25-30 minutes.

6 comments:

Rosie said...

Oh boy fresh picked strawberries my tongue is hanging out here...lol I can't wait for strawberry season to hit England this summer.

I'm loving your strawberry loaf cake and muffins and dreaming of when I can this bake of yours! :D

Rosie x

Chibog in Chief said...

what could you ask for more..strawberries and walnut. this muffin will definitely in my to try list..thanks for the recipe now i know what i can do with my walnuts sitting there on top of my fridge :-)

Megan said...

Organic strawberrys soon for you, I'm jealous. Your right about the cinnamon taking center stage in this quick bread. Strawberry butter helped put some strawberry flavor back in but no matter how you bake it- it's delish!

Gigi said...

Strawberry muffins sound divine! Thanks for the tip on the cinnamon.

Evie said...

nice work- i just added you to my links list on my baking blog :)

Rosie said...

Wishing you a very Happy Valentines Day!

I would like to present you on this Valentines Day a Red Rose

http://rosiebakesapeaceofcake.blogspot.com/2008/02/for-my-valentine-cupcakes.html

Rosie x