How to make perfect strawberry muffins with a lightly spiced batter and lots of fresh strawberries. These strawberry muffins are quick and straightforward, you can even make them in the morning for breakfast.
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Related: See 12 must-try muffin recipes our family makes over and over again!
How to Make Muffins Bursting with Fresh Strawberries
If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ve probably caught on to our love for muffins. Whenever I feel like baking without the hassle of washing dishes, I turn to muffins (check out our beloved blueberry muffins — they are just as easy).
These delightful strawberry muffins are quick and easy to make. In fact, you can whip them up in the morning and enjoy them for breakfast. They are similar to our vanilla peach muffins, which are equally delicious.
We make a version of these muffins all the time — sometimes swapping strawberries for other fruits like blueberries. The batter is straightforward: flour, baking powder, a little oil, egg, milk, and vanilla extract.
In the strawberry muffin recipe provided below, you’ll see that we’ve added some spices to the batter – cinnamon and black pepper. While including black pepper in sweet baked treats may seem unusual, we love it!
You don’t necessarily taste the black pepper, but it boosts the taste of other ingredients in the batter, especially the strawberries. So give it a try and taste it for yourself. We love it and think you will too.
Tips for Making Strawberry Muffins
For the best-tasting muffins, use sweet and flavorful strawberries. Thawed and drained frozen strawberries will work, but their texture is much softer than fresh, so don’t be surprised if they fall apart a little when you mix them into the batter.
If you cannot find strawberries, feel free to experiment with other fruits or berries like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, peaches, or cherries – they would all be fantastic.
As a final touch before baking, we sprinkle a little sugar over the muffins. It’s entirely up to you whether to include it, but we adore the sweet crunch it adds.
More Strawberry Recipes: We love this Fresh Strawberry Pie as well as this simple Strawberry Cake.
Perfect Strawberry Muffins
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
These light and airy strawberry muffins are so easy to make. We love adding a light spice to the batter with cinnamon and finely ground black pepper. The black pepper might sound a bit unexpected, but trust us, just a tiny amount works wonders for the flavor of the muffins. Feel free to leave it out, but we highly recommend it.
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
Muffins1 ½ cups (195 grams) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1/3 cup (80 ml) vegetable oil
1 large egg
1/3 to 1/2 cup (80 ml – 120 ml) milk, reduced fat or whole milk are best
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
8 ounces strawberries, hulled and diced, about 1 ¼ cup diced
Topping1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
1Heat the oven to 400° Fahrenheit (204° C). Line 12 standard-size muffin cups with paper liners.
2Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and the black pepper in a large bowl until well mixed.
3Using a measuring jug that holds at least 1 cup, measure the vegetable oil. Add the egg, then fill the measuring jug to the 1-cup line with milk (this should be 1/3 to a 1/2 cup of milk).
4Add 1 ½ teaspoons of vanilla extract and whisk until blended. Pour into the bowl with flour and stir with a fork until just combined. Do not overmix. The muffin batter will be pretty thick — see note below). Stir in the strawberries.
5Make the topping, by stirring one tablespoon of sugar with a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla.
- To Finish
1Divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups. The batter will come close to the tops of the paper liners. Lightly sprinkle the vanilla sugar topping over muffins.
2Bake muffins until tops are golden brown, no longer wet, and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out with crumbs, not wet batter; 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Frozen strawberries: Thaw, drain excess liquid, then dice. The thawed frozen strawberries might break apart a bit more when mixing into the batter, but will still taste great.
- Storing: These are best on the day of baking. To keep them longer, place them in a plastic bag, in the fridge for 2 to 3 days, then warm just before eating. To freeze muffins, wrap them tightly in aluminum foil or place them in freezer bags, and freeze for up to 3 months.
- Batter Thickness: The batter should be thick and scoopable — not runny and not dry or extra thick like bread dough. If the batter is too runny, add flour, a tablespoon at a time, until correct consistency. If the batter is dry or too thick, add milk a tablespoon at a time until the proper consistency.
- Nutrition Facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values. We assumed reduced-fat milk.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
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Recipe updated, originally posted April 2014 in cooperation with Gold Medal Flour. Since posting this in 2014, we have tweaked the recipe to be more clear. – Adam and Joanne
Added chocolate chips, subbed strawberry extract instead of vanilla. Drizzled chocolate on top. To die for! Yummy.. Recipe was wonderful as a base for my alterations. Tasty!
This is my new go to spring strawberry muffin recipe! Excellent dessert cut in half and piled with more fresh strawberries and ice or whipped cream. Better than shortcake! Delicious!
Made these tonight and they were absolutely gorgeous. Thank you for this recipe.
I’m not a huge fan of muffins (usually crave savory over sweet) but this recipe is outstanding! I have a large basket of local blueberries so used those instead of strawberries and they came out so light and delicious! Will try with peaches when they come into season.
This strawberry muffin recipe is the ONLY one I use now. It’s the best tasting muffin ever!! That hint of pepper just adds such a unique special touch. I enjoy all your recipes but had to tell you what a hit these are at our house! Thank you.
Doubled the recipe and it made 36 large muffins. Took them to a class and everyone enjoyed them. They were nice and moist. I did not add the topping to the muffins because I thought they would be sweet enough without it and they were. I would recommend letting the muffins cool a bit before removing from the muffin pans, as they were extremely squishy if removed directly from the oven. I let my muffins sit for about 10 minutes before removing them to the wire rack to cool completely. Will be making them again for another gathering.
This is my go to muffin recipe now! So good, and always do the pepper.
Delicious. I followed the recipe to the letter… but at the last minute I added a couple of tablespoons of crushed pecans to the vanilla sugar topping. They provided a little crunch and tempered the sweetness of the muffins ever so slightly. Decadent….
Wonderful! I substituted Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Gluten Free flour and used Almond Milk. I added unsweetened Cocoa powder, so we could have chocolate strawberry muffins. My 3 year old Granddaughter loved them! The recipe made 12 regular size muffins which is the size tin we had, perfect!