Strawberry Juice Muffins for the Height of Summer

Okay it might not literally be the 'height of summer' yet but we've certainly had the hottest days this week! If you can handle turning your oven on, these strawberry juice muffins are a great way to use the bounty of England's finest summer crop. Maybe you have a surplus from your own garden (lucky), maybe you live in the Berry Toon capital of the world (Blairgowrie), or maybe like me you simply bought kilos upon kilos on super offer at Tesco.

These muffins use a homemade strawberry juice (honestly, make some extra for you to drink, what a treat) AND chopped strawberries in the batter, so you know, wow. A lot of professional bakers would tell you that the best way to make strawberry muffins is to use a sharp liquid like orange juice so the acid cuts the sweetness. But my position is to pile sugar on top of sugar. It's strawberry season, people! LIVE A LITTLE.

My favourite part of making these muffins, besides the Bikram baking experience I created in my kitchen (insert little sweating red emoji face here), is that I prepared the batter and preheated the oven all before checking whether I had muffin cup liners. Reader: I did not have any. True to form, true to form.

all I had were this tiny little MINI MUFFIN liners. WHAT ARE YOU GOOD FOR? YOU'RE TOO SMALL!

Make sure you have them before making muffins (you'd think that goes without saying) and your post-bake experience will be a wee bit neater than mine was.

I'm sorry that the goooorgeous pink colour of the batter baked brown, but they still taste like little summery dreams! Give them a try and let us know what you think.

STRAWBERRY JUICE MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS

• 500-600 grams strawberries (I mean this is flexible)

• 2 cups flour

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/3 cup oil

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

• 2/3 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup water

DIRECTIONS

1. In your blender, blend up 1/2 your strawberries (like 250-300g) with the water, oil, vanilla, and vinegar. Or just do the strawberries and water if you want to taste some and then mix in the rest after, really, float your own boat here.

2. In a mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients - flour, bakings powder and soda, salt, sugar.

3. Mix your wets into the dries until just combined.

4. Chop up the remainder of your strawberries and add as few or as many as you'd like to the batter. Just fold them into the batter. JUST FOLD IT IN!

5. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.

6. Pour your batter into your LINED muffin pan (or your sprayed pan if you're me), filling the cups about 3/4 of the way.

6b. The best part about baking with me is that there's always a bit extra batter for making a personal-pan-pizza size of whatever you've got, so you can eat that without affecting the dozen-ness of your dozen muffins. I poured the extra batter into a little 6x4 or so pan. BONUS CAKE!

don't mind my dirty oven mitt as you gaze upon my bonus cake

7. Bake your muffins for about 18 minutes or at least check at that stage for doneness. If you like crispy edges leave them for a few extra minutes!

8. Maybe top with some raw sugar and enjoy!!

how great is my new plate y'all!!!!!!!!!!!!

this one too!!!

If you try these, tell us what you think! What do you like to do with strawberries? Obviously we're eating them with cream too!

Any recipe requests you'd like to see in the future? Let us know!