It’s such a luxurious feeling to wake up to the smell of freshly-baked muffins, especially if you’re a houseguest. Muffins are a particularly good breakfast choice when you have houseguests because they can be left in the kitchen with a bowl of fruit, a pitcher of juice, and a coffeemaker, so guests can rise at their leisure and serve themselves at any time. It relieves the morning pressure to appear and account for oneself, and sets a nice, relaxed tone for the day.
It’s been said that strawberries are not a good fruit to put into muffins because the moisture in them makes the dough too wet. I didn’t find this to be the case, but I added ricotta cheese to the batter. It thickened things up and added a nice, mellow flavor, making the muffins taste more like a sour cream coffeecake. The berries keep it moist and fruity, and as always, I like muffins that have a 50/50 ratio of batter-to-fruit to make it as healthy as possible.
Strawberry Ricotta Breakfast Muffins
Serves: Makes eight muffins
Prep time: 15 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cup flour
- ½ cup sugar plus one tablespoon sugar for bottom of paper cupcake liners
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon cinnamon plus ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- ½ cup ricotta cheese
- 1 egg
- 2 ounces butter, melted
- ½ cup milk
- 1 ½ cups strawberries, hulled and sliced
Directions
- Preheat over to 400 degrees. Line cupcake tin with paper liners.
- Combine one tablespoon sugar with ¼ teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle half of the mixture into the bottom of each paper liner.
- In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, sugar, and half the strawberries, reserving half for placing on top of muffins. Add ricotta and mix in gently.
- In a smaller bowl, whisk together melted butter, milk, and egg.
- Add to the flour-and-strawberry mixture, and spoon batter into paper muffin tins.
- Do not fill beyond 2/3 full. Top muffins with reserved berries, and sprinkle with rest of cinnamon and sugar.
- Bake for 20 minutes until tops of muffins are golden brown.
