Cherry Kefir Muffins with Orange Zest – Easy Homemade Recipe
Back in my childhood, long ago, we didn't know what muffins were. What we knew were sweet fruit cakes with raisins, which were sold everywhere and cost next to nothing. People baked them at home in tin molds with great success, and if they didn't want to complicate things, they bought a ready-made cake mix. And, by the way, they turned out great.
Muffins, which everyone knows, are small sweet cakes, baked goods with all kinds of fruit fillings: jam or preserves, chocolate, fresh fruit, candied fruit and dried fruit. A muffin is about the size of a small apple, so you can hold it with two fingers. Muffins are usually made with wheat flour, though versions made with cornmeal or oat flour are quite common.
I read somewhere that the familiar word “muffin” comes either from a French or a German word meaning “soft bread”. It doesn't matter much. What matters is that muffins, whatever fruit goes into the batter, are incredibly tasty. Especially with good tea or warm milk. They became popular more than a century ago, after one of the World's Fairs.
Muffins are so simple to bake that you can make them right before tea or breakfast. I think it's this simplicity and speed that made them so popular. Since muffins go stale quickly and lose their look, store-bought ones often have various additives to keep them fresh, which are mostly not very good for us. That's why baking muffins at home is much more appealing and convenient.
English muffins are generally made with yeast dough, while American ones are made with baking powder or baking soda. Ready-made flour mixes for every kind of muffin are sold everywhere. Some of them also contain additives that stop the fruit from sinking in the batter.
In the simplest version, to make homemade muffins you need wheat flour, baking powder, sugar, butter, kefir and eggs. Exactly what you can buy at any local shop. Everything else is secondary and not essential. We'll make homemade muffins with fresh or frozen cherries, flavoring the batter with orange zest. A wonderful dessert for an evening tea with the whole family.
Ingredients
12-15 muffins
- Wheat flour 3 cups
- Eggs 2
- Low-fat kefir 1 cup
- Sugar 1 cup
- Butter 100 g
- Orange zest 1
- Olive oil 1 tbsp
- Cherries (pitted) 100 g
- Powdered sugar 1 tbsp
- Vanillin, ground ginger, baking powder to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Before you start making muffins, get all the ingredients ready and divide them into separate small bowls. Mixing goes quickly and everything needs to be at hand. Also turn the oven on in advance and heat it to 200 °C.
- Prepare paper muffin cups. They look like an upside-down truncated cone with strongly ridged walls. The batter is poured straight into the paper cups, which are then simply peeled off the finished muffins. That, by the way, is one of the pleasant moments of tea time, a bit like popping bubble wrap. Paper cups are very cheap, quite colorful, and sold in packs of 50-100.
- Mix the wheat flour with 1 tsp baking powder. Baking powder is usually sold in small sachets and contains ammonium carbonate. Baking soda with citric acid is often used instead, but that noticeably affects the flavor of the muffins. Baking powder based on ammonium carbonate has no effect on flavor at all, since ammonium carbonate decomposes completely into gases and leaves no residue. On the other hand, ammonium carbonate is unstable and has to be perfectly fresh every time. Sift the flour and baking powder mixture through a fine sieve.
- Mix the sugar and vanillin. If you have natural vanillin, you need half a level teaspoon. If you use a mixture of sugar and vanillin, “vanilla sugar”, you need 1 tsp or even more. Go by your own taste.
- Grate all the zest off a large orange. You can eat the orange. Or rather, you should eat the orange to lift your mood. The eggs shouldn't be cold; let them come to room temperature beforehand. And finally, brush the paper cups inside with olive oil, otherwise the paper will stick to the muffins for good.
- In the mixer bowl, combine the eggs, making sure there are no bits of shell, with the sugar and vanillin. Beat the eggs with the sugar gently, without rushing, until the sugar has completely dissolved.
- Add all the grated zest and 1 tsp ground dried ginger to the egg and sugar mixture. You may not believe it, but ground ginger improves the flavor of baked goods considerably, and the muffins will taste amazing. Keep beating until completely smooth.
- Pour the low-fat kefir into the whipped mixture. We usually use good-quality store-bought kefir made from milk. The kefir should be 1-2% fat and not too runny, with a consistency like a favorite homemade cherry kissel. Mix with the mixer until smooth.
- Put the butter in a small bowl and melt it in the microwave until liquid, but don't heat it, under no circumstances. The melted butter should be at room temperature or slightly warmer. Add the melted butter to the mixer bowl and beat until completely smooth.
- Now comes an important point: add the mixture of flour and baking powder in portions. The amount of flour given is only approximate. You may need a little less or a little more, depending on the thickness of the whipped mixture. So add the flour mixture in portions and mix it in with the mixer.
- You should end up with a creamy batter, close in consistency to thick honey. Batter scooped up on a spoon should barely pour off. This amount of batter makes 12-15 muffins.
- Arrange the greased cups on a baking tray. You can line the tray with a silicone mat. Or, much more convenient, use a special muffin pan with individual cavities for the paper cups.
- Using a spoon, fill each paper cup with batter to 2/3 of its height. The batter is runny enough to spread by itself into all the ridges on the sides of the cup, and the surface levels out.
- Now comes the moment that decides whether these are just cupcakes or muffins, say, with cherries. Fresh or thawed pitted cherries are easy to squeeze to remove any leftover juice, which you don't need. It's even worth patting the cherries dry with a paper towel. Place 3-5 cherries on top of the batter in each cup. The cherries will sink a little into the semi-liquid batter, but not completely. This matters, because if the batter is too runny, the cherries will sink to the bottom, and the finished muffins will most likely crumble or break once the paper is removed.
- One more important point. If you end up baking the muffins in two batches, put the batter left for the second round in the fridge.
- Put the baking tray with the filled cups in the oven preheated to 200 °C. Baking time for the muffins is about 30 mins.
- Of course, keep an eye on the baking; you may need to shorten or lengthen the time, depending on how they're doing. The finished muffins start to turn lightly golden, and if you pierce one with a toothpick, no liquid batter sticks to it.
- Take the baked muffins out of the oven and move them from the tray to a wooden board. Dust with a little powdered sugar, sifting it through a tea strainer straight onto the muffins.
- Cherry muffins are incredibly tasty with hot tea, especially with lemon. The very delicate and pleasant taste of warm baked goods with fragrant tea: what more could you want for an evening tea with friends or family?
| Yield: | 12-15 muffins |
| Calories: | 370 kcal per 100 g |
| Prep: | 30 mins |
| Cook: | 30 mins |
| Total: | 1 h |
| Category: | Baking › Sweet Baking |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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4.8
(5)
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