Cheery Cherry Morning

Today was a good day to bake up some Valentine muffins. My friends came for brunch, and I'll be showing those photos tomorrow. I wanted something red, and I had a sack of frozen giant sweet cherries. A quick search on Google yielded this recipe for Sweet Tomatoes' Cherry Nut Muffins. Well, why not? I would recommend these. Not dry, and the cherries made huge, moist pockets all through the batter. In fact, I just had one with a cup of coffee here at midnight. happy Valentine's Day to me...

Sweet Tomato Days was my recipe blog name before I ever heard of the restaurant chain of Sweet Tomatoes.

I'll share the recipe found on the Internet.

SWEET TOMATOES' CHERRY-NUT MUFFINS

3½ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup whole-wheat flour (I didn't have this, so I used all-purpose)

2 tablespoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

2 cups reduced-fat buttermilk (I made mine with 1 tsp. vinegar per cup of milk.)

11/8 cups granulated sugar

1 cup canola oil

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 (14.5-ounce) can tart cherries, drained ( I used frozen sweet cherries. They were huge and awesome!)

1 tsp. vanilla extract (I added this.)

 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Coat a muffin pan with nonstick spray or use paper liners. It's a good idea to spray the top of the tins lightly, too, which can help prevent the muffin tops from sticking.

Whisk together the flours, baking powder, salt and chopped nuts in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, stir together the buttermilk, sugar, oil and eggs. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, being careful not to overmix. Gently stir in the cherries.

Divide the batter among 20 to 24 muffin cups, filing them about 2/3 full. Bake 15 to 20 minutes.

Makes 20 to 24 muffins. I made extremely large muffins and sprinkled sugar on the tops before baking. It took about 30 minutes at 350°. I had 18 muffins.

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day!!!!