Strawberry Sour Cream Muffins

Well, you spoke and I answered.  It seems a lot of you are interested in muffins and breads.  So I'll start there, but I also have some cake, brownie and sweet treat recipes in mind.  I spent much of my Saturday afternoon scouring my dessert recipes for things I love to make and some I haven't even tried yet.

Like these.  I was flipping through my go-to muffin cookbook (Jean Childress' Country Kitchen Muffin Cookbook) to find a different recipe and these caught my eye.  So I pulled out the muffin tin (er, muffin stone?) and here we are.  These aren't very sweet and will get a lot of flavor from the jam you use.  I chose strawberry preserves, but you could make these with anything--raspberry jam, apricot preserves, orange marmalade.  I don't see why you couldn't use grape jelly if you were so inclined.  The one change I would make to the ingredients would be to add a teaspoon of extract to punch up the flavor.  The muffin looks light and airy, but is deceivingly dense, which was a surprise since I sifted the ingredients.


Strawberry Sour Cream Muffins

2 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons butter, softened
1 egg
1 cup sour cream
1 1/3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup strawberry jam (or jam/preserves of your choice)

Cream butter and sugar.  Add egg and sour cream and mix together.  In a separate bowl, sift dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) together.  Add to butter/sour cream mixture and gently combine. 

Divide half the batter among a greased 12 cup muffin tin.  I used a medium cookie scoop, putting about one scoop of batter into each muffin cup.  Shake the muffin tin gently to spread the batter into the pan--it's a stiff dough, so you may want to use a spatula to encourage the dough to fill each cup.

Drop 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of jam into each muffin cup. 

Top with remaining batter (another medium cookie scoopful).  Sprinkle with struesel topping (below) and bake at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes.

Muffins are done with a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or they are firm, but spring back when touched and are gently browned. 

Allow to cool for a few minutes in muffin tin (this give you crunchy edges), then remove to cooling racks.  Serve immediately or store in an airtight container for up to a week or freeze.

Struesel Topping

1/3 cup butter, softened
13 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Place all ingredients in a small bowl and using a pastry blender, mix together by cutting in the butter.  the result will be a crumbly mixture of butter bits.  Sorry I don't have a picture--I spaced on this one.  Which is unfortunate because I actually thought this made way too much topping, so I saved the remaining and used in on my banana bread recipe (yes, I'll share it with you!).  So that means I forgot to take a picture of the bowl twice.

Makes 12 muffins.

Happy Baking,
The Cookie Princess