Another emergency morning baking project this week!  This one was taken on by Jenna, and resulted in these tasty treats to serve a back porch guest as a little somethin’ to have with tea!

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She had every intention of making our easy cream scones, but a peek in the fridge revealed a lack of enough heavy cream and with just over an hour to spare, no time to run to the grocery store AND make the scones before her guest arrived!  

What to do…she knew she needed a quick bread type recipe and we had on hand some miscellaneous citrus fruit and some strawberries.  The fridge DID harbor butter (though not softened), sour cream, milk, assorted jams, and plenty of eggs, and she knew to look to my trusty William Sonoma cookbook library to page through the one titled Muffins and Quick Breads !  

She came upon this very doable recipe that we hadn’t tried yet, and gave it a go. It called for strawberries - check, and orange rind - check, and sour cream - check…and blessedly no need for softened butter, because that is possible but not ideal on short notice.  Everything else would be baking staples we always have on hand.

On a side note, this would be a great recipe if you are staying in a kitchen ill-equipped for serious baking since it doesn’t require any special equipment like an electric mixer.

Our extended family has stayed in many summer vacation rentals that advertised a “fully-equipped kitchen” by which they mean it has a coffee maker…  And we have had to make a mecca to the local store to procure reasonably sized bowls to mix in and measuring spoons! 

After our first questionable kitchen experience, we started traveling with the car packed with our own kitchen essentials (we *might* be the only family with a traveling garlic press)…just in case!  Hey, we LIKE to cook! 

But back to our muffins in question - time was running out!  Jenna, being the daughter of a blogger, gifted me with photos documenting the process :)

Jenna is a smart and intuitive cook and generally prefers cooking over baking so usually leaves the baking to me.  But her guest, her muffins - I had other work to do at the time!  Having binge-watched the Great British Baking Show, Jenna was keen on weighing ingredients rather than measuring them.  

I must say using a baking scale IS nice! You can see how much you are adding in real time instead of having to remember how many times you filled the measuring cup…if you’ve ever had to dump the flour and start over more than once because you got interrupted and lost track (show of hands? me too!), you’ll appreciate the weighing method as far more efficient.  

It is also much more accurate, and in baking, accuracy is important because baking is really just chemistry that tastes good!  Surely you’ve seen the baking episode with Miss Frizzle of Magic School Bus fame?

The Recipe

Strawberry-Orange Muffins

from Williams-Sonoma Muffins and Quick Breads

makes ~ 16 muffins

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups (280 g) all purpose flour

• 2 tsps baking powder

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 3/4 cup (185 g) sugar

• 1/2 cup (4 fl oz) milk

• 1/2 cup (4 fl oz) sour cream

• 1/3 cup (3 fl oz) vegetable oil

• 1 egg

• 1 Tbsp finely grated orange zest

• 1 cup (185 g) thinly sliced fresh strawberries

• ~1/3 cup (125 g) strawberry jam

• optional: sparkling sugar for sprinkling the tops

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400º F 

• Grease standard muffin tins with butter (or line with muffin papers)

• In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt

• In a medium bowl, whisk together sugar, milk, sour cream, vegetable oil, egg, and orange zest

• Stir in sliced strawberries

• Add the sugar mixture to the bowl with the dry ingredients, stir just until combined

• Place a small scoop of batter in the bottom of each muffin cup, top with a scant teaspoon of jam PRO TIP: spray your scoop with non-stick cooking spray to make the batter easy to release

• Add a scoop of batter over the jam, filling each cup about 2/3 full

• Optionally, sprinkle the tops with large crystal sparkling sugar or granulated sugar (for a crunchy sweet top crust)

• Bake until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean ~ 15 to 18 minutes.

• Cool in muffin tins for 5 minutes, then remove.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Some favorite baking tools (click on text below image for link)

These are very tasty and I like the sweet surprise of a dollop of jam in the center!  I imagine this recipe would easily accommodate different fruit/citrus peel/jam combinations too…

here are some to try:

blueberries/lemon zest/lemon curd

raspberries/lime zest/raspberry jam

blackberries/lemon zest/blackberry jam

strawberries/orange zest/orange marmalade

You can elevate the presentation of your muffins or cupcakes by keeping some pretty cupcake papers on hand. I like these tulip folded ones that you can find in all sorts of patterns for a gourmet bakery look…and BONUS, the muffin tin doesn’t need greasing and is easy to clean!

And the patterned muffin baking cups are oven safe so you can bake right in them without a muffin tin and they too, come in so many pretty colors and patterns!

Here are some pretty options (click on text below image for links)

Enjoy!

Other Posts You Might Enjoy:

Easy Cream Scones

Best Blueberry Muffins