In episode 12 we learn how to make best gluten-free strawberry Muffins with this easy and versatile recipe!! Light and fluffy muffins dotted with juicy strawberries and a crunchy sweet topping are adaptable for dairy-free or a variety of fruit flavors! Join Melissa as she shares many easy, pro tips, plus the best ingredients and methods for success. This audio recipe for gluten-free muffins will transform you into expert gluten-free baker.
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Recipes and Resources Mentioned
- Gluten-Free Strawberry Muffins
- Gluten-Free Apple Muffins (with streusel topping)
- Best Gluten-Free Flour Guide
- More gluten-free muffins recipes
Recommended Equipment
- Muffin Pan
- Large Trigger Scoop
Recommended ingredients
- Cup4Cup All Purpose Gluten-Free Flour
- Coarse Sugar
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Transcript
Hello everyone. I’m Melissa Erdelac, host of the Gluten-Free Recipe Challenge podcast and creator behind the gluten-free website, MamaGourmand. Here we take beloved recipes you thought you’d never enjoy again and transform them into easy copycat versions, just as good as the originals.
A lot of times I think about all the ways that I made my life harder when the kids were younger. I was adamant about checking boxes of things that I thought would be a fun adventure and prompt my kids to look back on their childhood, like their mom was some sort of homesteading badass. For example, all the fruit picking we would do.
In the hot 100% humidity, Midwest summer months we used to hit every produce milestone. And it all kicked off with strawberry picking, which if you haven’t been, is the absolute worst. You have to bend down for hours and rummage through plants and weeds to fill a little bucket. When you have toddlers, it holds the attention for about four minutes. Nothing ever makes it inside their actual bucket because they eat every single thing that they pick, and then they walk over to your bucket and try to take all the strawberries out that you picked. Then after that they just complain for hours on end that they’re hot and thirsty. Which is totally legitimate because it is fucking miserable.
So did you know you could just buy strawberries? And if you’re a mom of young kids, take my advice, do that. If your kids are like under 18, do not go strawberry picking with them. Even then, it’s a stretch.
Then to tap it all off when you get home, you have to immediately go into strawberry preserving mode. You have to wash them, you have to make jam, or you have to freeze them.
So instead of experiencing all that joy, just go to the freaking grocery store, pick up a package of delicious and perfectly in seasoned strawberries right now, and you can make these extremely light and fluffy, gluten-free strawberry muffins with them. Everyone wins.
You can actually make this recipe all summer long for any fruit that’s in season, like blueberries or raspberries, blackberries, or even if you have frozen fruit. Today, I will talk through not only how to make this recipe in particular, but how to avoid dry and crumbly muffins, or dense and gummy ones all in this GF muffin recipe.
It’s pretty simple. So let’s do it.
First of all, what you need? Gluten-free flour. I found that Cup4Cup gluten-free flour to be superior in all of my baking experiences. But if you wanna check out alternative gluten-free flours, like say you can’t have dairy, I have a gluten-free flour resource where I test all the flours with cookies, biscuits, breads, and you could find one that would possibly work better for you. But I found Cup4Cup to be the best at mimicking that wheat flour, taste, and texture.
You’ll also need eggs. You need three large eggs for this recipe, which is more than a typical muffin recipe. But since the batter is rather thick, adding an extra egg adds moisture without making a gummy crumb. So if you added milk or some other liquid to thin out the batter, then it wouldn’t be able to be absorbed into the flour, which the eggs do a better job of absorbing.
Next, you’ll need sour cream, or you can use yogurt, and this kind of gives the tang of buttermilk, but it keeps the dough sturdier to help with structure. So it’s another way that it adds moisture without making the texture gummy. The sour cream or yogurt incorporates better with the gluten-free starches, but for dairy-free muffins, you can also replace it with coconut or almond milk yogurt. And please keep in mind that the higher fat content the better. So I would use full fat sour cream or whole milk yogurt .
Butter, which we melt instead of using softened butter. And melting the butter just hydrates the ingredients more , so it coats the starches and it eliminates some of that gritty ricey texture. For dairy free muffins, you can replace it with vegan butter sticks.
Other than that, you need sugar, vanilla extract. You need baking powder and baking soda, salt, and then your strawberries.
You could use fresh or frozen, but if you’re listening to this when strawberries are in season, I’d recommend fresh and you only need one and one half cup, so one package would be fine.
Okay, so let’s make ’em. First, you’re gonna melt your butter. You need eight tablespoons of butter, and melt it first to give it time to cool before mixing it with the other ingredients. If you mix it in too fast, the butter’s gonna re-solidify and it’s not gonna incorporate as well in the batter. So while it’s cooling, go ahead and line your muffin pan with muffin cups, or you could grease it with non-stick cooking spray.
At this point, you do not preheat the oven. You do that later while the batter rests. And I’ll go over that later why you let the batter rest a little bit before baking the muffins.
In a large bowl, whisk together your cooled butter, 3/4 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of yogurt or sour cream, three eggs and one teaspoon of vanilla extract.
After that’s whisked together, then just stir in your dry ingredients. So stir in 2 1/4 cup gluten-free flour, 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of baking soda and a 1/2 a teaspoon of salt. And then just stir that until no flour pockets remain. You don’t wanna overmix it, but you wanna make sure all the dry ingredients are incorporated.
The batter at this point is going to be pretty thick. It’s more thick than a traditional muffin recipe. Once you have that mixed in, then you gently fold in your fruit. You will fold in the strawberries. Or if you’re choosing other berries, then do that now.
Now is the time when you preheat your oven, go ahead and pre-heat it to 350. And while it’s preheating, put the muffin batter into the prepped muffin tins. I use a large trigger scoop. It’s almost like a ice cream trigger scoop, and I will link to the one that I use to distribute the batter. That way I know every muffin cup is even , and it does it really quickly. And like I said, since this batter is a little thicker, it’s just easier to use that big scoop and plop it in the muffin cups.
Once it’s in there, I slightly wet my fingers just so it doesn’t stick to the dough, and I pat down the tops evenly. If you want, to make ’em prettier, you can even add some more chopped strawberries on top, and sprinkle the tops with some coarse sugar. I do this just to give a little crunchy crust to the top.
Okay, so this is when you let it rest. Your ovens already started to preheat, so you’ll probably only need like five to 10 minutes more for it to come to temperature and just let them sit while the oven preheats. You don’t want ’em to sit too long because then the moisture is gonna be too absorbed and the muffins will be drier. At most just let ’em sit for like 15, 20 minutes and at room temperature.
Go ahead and bake them for 20 to 22 minutes and you rotate the pan halfway through baking. You’ll know when they’re done by inserting a toothpick in the center and it should come out clean.
Take the muffins out of the oven and cool ’em in the pan for five minutes before you take ’em and onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Some other options of how you can modify this recipe. You can make strawberry lemon muffins, so I would add one tablespoon of lemon zest to the muffin batter, and then you can even drizzle the tops with the lemon glaze, which is just one cup of powder sugar mixed with two tablespoons of lemon juice.
You can also add a crumb topping, and I have a streusel topping on my gluten-free apple muffins recipe that I can link to. And you can use that crumb topping for the top. And like I said earlier, you could replace the fresh strawberries with frozen blueberries or any mixed berries. Or if you just wanna do another glaze on top, you can do a vanilla glaze and mix together one cup of powdered sugar with 1 1/2 tablespoons of milk and a 1/2 of teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Make sure they have cooled completely, and then once they’ve cooled, then you could store them in an airtight container up to two days at room temperature.
Don’t put ’em in the fridge or it will dry ’em out. And honestly, if I don’t eat ’em that day, then I always freeze the muffins. I wrap each of them up in plastic wrap and place ’em in a freezer safe container or a Ziploc freezer bag, and you could freeze up to three months.
Okay, so that’s it. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Gluten-Free Recipe Challenge. Remember, you can find the full printable recipe on the show notes page, and to get to it, just click on the link provided in whatever podcast app you’re listening on. Or you could go to my recipe website mamagourmand.com and click on the podcast tab. And the show notes will include the full recipe, along with any tips or recommended ingredients. And please remember if you’re liking the show to hit follow or subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
The post Episode 12 Easy Tricks for Fluffy Gluten-Free Muffins appeared first on MamaGourmand.
