Strawberry muffins...

With a new strawberry season approaching in a month and a half (or so), I've suddenly woken up to the fact that we need to get serious about using up a bunch of frozen strawberries in our freezer!

Last June, with me having a major surgery scheduled in the middle of the month,  we picked strawberries and ate them 'till we couldn't anymore.  I imagine we may have given some away as well, but by the time I submitted myself to the surgery center and the subsequent weeks of healing, the freezer was stocked with a dozen or more quart-sized frozen bags of beautiful red berries. 

All that picking and freezing would be so nice come summer, I thought.  I couldn't have planned it any better.  I did worry a bit about how we would manage picking the cherries and peaches we expected the next two months. 

Then, surprisingly, neither the cherry tree nor the peach tree produced anything in June and July.  We don't know if it was weather related or if we had pruned the trees too much the fall before, but in the end it felt like a mercy that we didn't have any fruit to deal with during the weeks I was healing from surgery.  

And then, when chemo started in the late summer, and my taste buds immediately became affected, I discovered that fruit (especially strawberries) tasted like soap.  Blech.  It became clear that none of the frozen strawberries were going to get eaten for the duration of that unpleasantness.  I think it was Thanksgiving before food started tasting in the neighborhood of normal, and the tastebuds were only fully back as Christmas started to approach.  

Then winter set in and I was decidedly not into eating frozen strawberries, or making smoothies or fruit popsicles (my other frozen strawberry treats)  once it turned cold outside.   And even though we've had an unseasonably warm late winter and early spring, by that time the frozen strawberries had pretty much slid off my radar.  

All of that is to explain how more than nine months could go by and very few of the frozen strawberries picked in the early weeks of June last year got eaten.

So recently, I've gone online looking for what to make with them - because it's become chilly again and I still don't want to eat frozen strawberries. 

Having no desire to make jam and, not caring much for fruity desserts, my options seemed severely limited. But then I was a little intrigued  when I came upon recipes for strawberry muffins. I wasn't 100% sure they sounded good, but everyone who had a recipe blog seemed to be in love with strawberry muffins.  The thing that held me back at first was that almost all the recipes I found said to use fresh strawberries - with the explanation that frozen strawberries would do if fresh wasn't available.  The vibe I got was frozen strawberries might make subpar strawberry muffins.  And that notion got in my way for several weeks, I'm sad to say.

Finally, I decided I wouldn't know if I didn't try, so I took the plunge.  And I am so glad I did.  I decided to use this recipe at Once Upon A Chef and I have decided I need look no further. I did forego putting sugar on top of the muffins (ack!  too sweet for me), and I don't have any almond extract, but other than those two things, I followed the recipe exactly - chopping up still partially frozen strawberries, tossing them in flour as suggested, and these strawberry muffins were superb, in my book.

I may try making them with a bit less sugar - not because they are too sweet, but less sugar would be - well... less sugar.  

Warm and slathered with butter, these were just heavenly.  I honestly, I love them every bit as much as I love blueberry muffins.  And I LOVE blueberry muffins.

At room temperature, they are a tasty quick treat.  I skipped the butter. 

I'm thinking for my next batch I'll try substituting whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose flour.  I've been meaning to grind some wheat.  Now I have a perfect reason to stop dragging my feet and get that done.  Oooh... and some flax seed.  I need to try ground flax seed in these, too.  

If I could get these a bit healthier, and they still taste good, wouldn't that be nice.

Maybe I can tweak the recipe enough to make it my own and post it here.  I'll try, but until then, I highly recommend the recipe I followed.

To be honest, the website I've linked to is monetized to the point of annoyance.  Normally, I try not to link to such websites, but one can go in, click on "jump to recipe" and print it out without too much headache.  Unless pop-up ads, and constantly changing videos give you a headache - in which case, I am sorry. This is the best I can offer for now.

If you give this recipe a try, I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Are you hungry yet?