Cherry Chocolate Muffins

Spring/Summer Collection: Fresh, sweet fruits to whet your appetite.

You know what I mean…

This the exact picture of Spring and Summer – fresh fruits calling out to you, sweet, ripe and juicy, bursting in your mouth as your chew on them, savoring every bite with relish.

Now that many fruits are in season, I see them every day, lying seductively in cartons in the supermarkets, making it impossible for them to be ignored.

These beautiful cherries were beckoning to me, and because Spring and Summer bring with them such amazing harvests of fruits, I wasn’t going to miss out on eating them.

Beautiful, sweet, fresh cherries

I ended up buying a kilo of cherries, half for eating them after dinner, and the other half went straight into these beautiful cherry chocolate muffins.

Cherry Chocolate Muffins – a divine combination of flavors

To be honest, it was my first time experimenting with cherries.

I wanted to create the flavor of blackforest cake, but without the whipped cream and extra calories. The idea was to make muffins with an incredibly fresh flavor of cherries, complimented with a hint of chocolate, something to fill my craving without the fuss of fresh cream and toppings.

It was gooood. Really, really good if I might say..

CHERRY CHOCOLATE MUFFINS (Makes 20)

Ingredients:

1) 1 cup of milk cream
2) 2 cups of sugar
3) 3 cups of self-raising flour
4) 4 eggs
5) 1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
6) 500g of fresh cherries

Steps:

1) Wash, de-seed, and cut cherries into small pieces
2) Mix milk cream and sugar together until sugar dissolves
3) Add in self-raising flour, alternating each cup of flour with an egg
4) Mix well until a homogenous mixture is achieved
5) Add in cocoa powder and the final egg
6) Mix well to get muffin batter
7) Arrange paper muffin cups in muffin mould
8) Fill 1/4 of each cup with muffin batter
9) Add in a teaspoon full of cherry bits to the batter
10) Pour more batter on top of cherry bits until the muffin cups are 3/4 full
11) Bake in pre-heated oven at 180 deg cel for 25 – 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when poked in center
12) Once baked, allow muffins to cool for 10 minutes before serving or putting into a container

Fresh cherries:

Cut cherries into small pieces:

Mix milk cream and sugar together:

Until sugar is fully dissolved:

Add in flour, alternating each cup of flour with an egg:

Mix well to get a homogenous mixture:

Add in cocoa powder and last egg:

Mix well to get muffin batter:

Arrange paper muffin cups in muffin mould:

Fill each muffin cup with batter until 1/4 full:

Arrange 1 teaspoon of cherry bits over batter:

Add more batter until muffin cups are 3/4 full:

Fresh out of the oven!

Delicious Cherry Chocolate Muffins!!