Strawberry Mini-Muffins

I found this recipe in Parents magazine. You can easily vary the flavor, using small blueberries instead of strawberries for example, or making a piña colada version by replacing them with finely chopped pineapple and shredded coconut and swapping lemon for lime. I ended up adding strawberry powder in the batter, to make it pinker (strawberry powder is really finely crushed freeze-dried strawberries); I mixed it in with the dry ingredients. The muffins were delicious, with or without frosting, but the Little Prince said he didn’t like the strawberries in them. While I initially thought that defeated the purpose of strawberry muffins, I think that he may have a point here – the small pockets of fruit in a miniature muffin aren’t that pleasant, and there was already strawberry flavor and color from the strawberry powder. I’ll consider just making “pink muffins” next time. Without icing, they are GREAT in a lunchbox! That being said, once the icing has dried up (say, a whole day later), that would work too.

Note that for the flour, I just used 1 ½ cups of white whole wheat flour.

For the mini-muffins
¾ cup whole wheat flour
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 pinch of salt
¾ cup lactose-free milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup honey
¼ cup lactose-free butter or margarine, melted
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup finely chopped strawberries, fresh or frozen (see note above)
¼ cup freeze-dried strawberries (optional; I used strawberry powder, see note above)

For the icing
1/3 cup plain, full-fat, lactose-free Greek yogurt
¼ cup powdered sugar
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 400 °F. Grease a 24-tin mini-muffin pan.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together milk, eggs, honey, butter, and vanilla. Gently fold in dry ingredients, followed by strawberries and freeze-dried strawberries.

Divide batter among mini-muffin cups, filling to the edge. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then transfer muffins to wire rack to cool completely (I tend to let them cool longer in the pan).

Just before serving, make the icing by mixing together the yogurt, powdered sugar and lemon juice. Drizzle icing over muffins and top with freeze-dried strawberries, if desired (I again used strawberry powder here).