Cherry Muffins

Adapted from: recipezaar.com

I bought a bag of my favorite fruit, cherries, this afternoon, and I have been dying to make muffins, hence, these cherry muffins. I found a blueberry muffin recipe on recipezaar.com, so I just subbed out the blues for the cherries!

I made the batter, gave it a little taste, and thought, wow, this really isn't very sweet, maybe I need a bit more sugar... I turned for the sugar, and realized I never added ANY! Oops. So my batter was ultimately probably over mixed, and also probably not as combined as I would like, but the end result was still good. These were sweet, light and moist!

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and quartered
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1-1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Line or butter/grease 12 muffin cups
3. If using fresh cherries, rinse and thoroughly dry the berries.
4. In a small bowl, toss the fresh or frozen berries with the 1 tablespoon flour.
5. In a large bowl, stir together the 2 cups flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; make a well in the center.
6. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg and 1 cup of the buttermilk until combined.
7. Whisk in the vanilla and melted butter.
8. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the well.
9. Begin stirring the liquids, gradually drawing the dry ingredients into the well until they are almost, but not quite, combined.
10. If mixture is to thick, add the additional 1/4 cup of buttermilk and gently mix.
11. Add the cherries and fold in just to distribute evenly taking care not to overmix.
12. Evenly divide the batter among the prepared muffin cups.
13. Bake the muffins for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
14. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then carefully turn out onto the rack.
15. Serve warm, or cool completely.
16. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.