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Cherry muffins are a popular dessert or breakfast item made with flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, butter, milk, eggs, and cherries. Additional ingredients like sour cream, citrus zest, and chocolate can be added for flavor. Cooks must be precise with proportions and mixing to achieve an airy texture. Other fruits and ingredients can be used, and toppings like cream cheese frosting or extra cherries can be added for presentation.
Cherries are often the star of dessert or breakfast muffins around the world. Using pitted, fresh or canned cherries, chefs will prepare basic muffins with ingredients such as butter, milk, eggs, sugar, yeast, and salt. For added interest and flavor, many embellish their muffins with items like sour cream, cottage cheese, citrus zest and, perhaps most commonly, chocolate.
As with most desserts, cherry muffins require a certain precision of proportions. For a basic recipe that makes a dozen muffins, a cook uses 1.5 cups (about 190 g) flour to 0.5 cup (about 63 g) sugar, along with 0.5 tsp. (about 2.5 g) of salt and 2 tsp. (about 10 g) of baking powder. After these ingredients are combined, they are folded into the already mixed wet ingredients: 3 tbsp. (about 45 g) of melted butter, 1 cup (about 225 mL) of milk, two eggs, and 6 oz. (about 180 g) of macerated and pitted cherries. Often, half of the milk is replaced with juice from the jar of cherries – when using jarred cherries instead of fresh fruit.
Cooks vigorously mix the wet and dry ingredients for cherry muffins until fully combined. Too much mixing, however, could release most of the air pockets in the batter and lead to less airy muffins. After two muffin tins are lightly greased, the batter should fill the tins about two-thirds full. Cooking times and temperatures vary slightly, but a common approach is to cook them for at least 15 minutes in an oven set to 375°F (about 190°C).
Many connoisseurs may find plain cherry muffins to be just that — too plain. To embellish the recipe, cooks could add any number of other ingredients to impart extra flavor or a more sumptuous texture. Vanilla extract, nutmeg, cinnamon or lemon zest are minor additions. Ingredients like cottage cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, or semi-sweet chocolate chips change the flavor profile dramatically.
While the tops of cherry muffins can be left flat or simply sprinkled with natural sugar, others prefer a more elaborate presentation. A cream cheese frosting is one option. Many also reserve a few cherries to decorate the tops of muffins, pushing them into the batter halfway through the baking time. Bakers regularly experiment with different fruits to make these muffins as well. In addition to cherry muffins, many other types of products are commonly used: from bananas, blueberries and peaches to savory vegetables such as carrots, squash and zucchini.
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