Bakery Style Strawberry and White Chocolate Muffins – fluffy and sweet with a delicious strawberry tang.
A classic combination of strawberry and white chocolate, these muffins are the perfect snack to give you an afternoon energy boost.
I’ll admit to being a bit naughty and buying strawberries out of season. I love to have a big box of berries in the fridge at all times so I can top my granola, whizz into smoothies and make these muffins as a weekend treat.
You can swap with other fruit such as pineapple or rhubarb or blackberries (depending on the season of course). Other alternatives include:
Using dried fruit – like dried cranberries or blueberries.
Using frozen fruit. If you do use frozen fruit make sure it’s either pre-chopped or small to begin with (such as blueberries). Don’t defrost the fruit, and cook your muffins for an extra couple of minutes.
I’ve made a lot of muffins in the last year – I was on a mission to create a great base recipe that I could rely on to produce lovely, tall bakery style muffins.
So these have been made following a fair bit of trial and error! I’ve had dense muffins, overflowing muffins and dry muffins (all tested by my dutiful and brutally honest children – such a difficult job for them) until I finally found the perfection combination of ingredients and technique to guarantee success every time.
They’re really quick to prepare – you can have them in the oven in 10 minutes. Also you don’t need to use a mixer or a food processor. There’s no butter in the recipe that you need to cream with the sugar.
Rather, it’s a case of mixing oil with sugar – which you can do it very quickly in a bowl, by hand, then you just need to fold in each of the other ingredients.
I now come back to this recipe time and time again and modify it depending on what I fancy at the time – blackberry spice muffins, strawberry streusel muffins, even a great gluten free mixed berry version.
Here’s a bit of inside information I’ve acquired through my experimentation:
Oil – I use oil instead of butter in my muffins to get a light, fluffy result. Butter has more flavor, but doesn’t give the same result. Also, the added flavor of the fruit yoghurt means that you don’t notice the lack of buttery flavor anyway.
Fruit yogurt – Not only gives the muffins a great flavor, but it’s also the acidic element of the recipe that works with the alkaline (the baking soda) to give a great rise.
No sinking fruit – Although the muffins are light, the batter is actually quite thick. The combination of having a thick batter and also coating the strawberries in a little flour helps to suspend the fruit in the muffin – so you won’t getting everything sinking to the bottom!
My kids love it when I pack them one of these muffins in their lunch box. Half the time I’ve stolen their fruit yogurts to make them, so I suppose it’s only fair that they get something doubly delicious in return.
I’ve been known to use their normal fruit yogurts, the fruit corner yogurts, I’ve even resorted to using 6 or 7 of those little fruit fromage fraise tubes when I didn’t have anything else in. All of them worked well, so don’t worry if you don’t have posh adult yogurt!
You’ll notice I added some coarse pear sugar to half of these muffins. I wasn’t sure if it would brown in the oven, but it doesn’t.
I’d definitely add the sugar to all of them next time – it gives a lovely crunch which works well with the soft muffin.
- 200g/70z strawberries, hulled and chopped into small chunks
- 1 tbsp plain flour
- 200g/7oz golden caster sugar
- 1 large egg
- 80ml/2.7fl oz vegetable or coconut oil (melted and cooled)
- 1tsp vanilla extract
- 230ml/7.8fl oz strawberry yoghurt (ideally full fat, but fat-free does work)
- 250g/8.8oz plain flour (plus 1 extra tbsp. to mix with the strawberries)
- 1tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
- 150g/5.3oz good quality white chocolate, chopped into small chunks
- 2 tbsp. course pearl sugar (optional)
- Preheat your oven to 200c/400f and line a 12-hole muffin tin with muffin cases (or if you don't want muffin cases, just spray or brush a little oil in each hole.
- Mix all but 2 tbsp. of the chopped strawberries with the plain flour and put to one side
- Add the sugar and egg to a large bowl and mix using a fork or balloon whisk. Add in the oil and vanilla extract, stir, and then add in the yogurt and stir to combine. Next add in the flour and baking soda and mix together using a wooden spoon. Gently fold in the white chocolate chunks and the chopped strawberries that have already been mixed with 1 tbsp. flour.
- Take a 12 hole muffin tin and fill each hole (or muffin case) to the top with the cake mixture. Take the reserved strawberry pieces and sprinkle on to of the muffins, pressing them in slightly, then sprinkle on the pearl sugar. Place the muffins in the oven and cook at 200c/400f for 5 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180c/350f and cook for a further 15 minutes. Once cooked, leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before removing and cooling further on a cooling rack.