Who can deny the lusciousness of these lovelies? Not us. So we decided to pair them with ricotta in some tasty muffins that we found over at Joy of Baking. The original recipe came from Mollie "Moosewood" Katzen's Sunlight Cafe. A wonderful excuse to use some homemade ricotta, or a good enough reason to just go buy a container.
The ricotta in these muffins makes them quite decadent, almost custardy. They are sweet, but not verging on cupcake-sweet. The cherries makes them bright and lively. I'm already looking forward to having them tomorrow morning.
Cherry Ricotta Muffins
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tin with 12 paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together ricotta and eggs. Add buttermilk, vanilla, lemon juice, and melted butter, mixing well. Set aside.
- 1 cup ricotta
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 tbs vanilla extract
- 1 tbs fresh lemon juice
- 4 tbs unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/8 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- grated lemon zest from one lemon
- 1 1/2 cup cherries, pitted and halved
In another large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest. Add the ricotta mixture to the flour mixture, and stir until just combined. Fold in the cherries. (You can save 12 cherry halves to use place atop each muffin, but this is purely for aesthetic purposes.) Divide the batter amongst 12 muffin cups. Bake about 25 minutes or until lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle. Place on wire rack to cool.
Those muffins sound amazing with the ricotta! I'd love to try this recipe.
ReplyDeleteWhat a cute little muffin you have holding one too :)
What gorgeous photos! I have a sweet treat linky party going on at my blog till Monday night and I'd love it if you'd come by and link your muffins up. http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2011/06/sweets-for-saturday-23.html
ReplyDeleteThe muffins look tasty. The toddler is so cute I could eat her up too!
ReplyDeleteGonna make some butter and use that and the buttermilk and homemade ricotta... who would ever have realized it could be that easy? Thank you so very much! These will be my Valentine treats for my family... I saw the cutest post on Confessions of Crafty Witches on facebook that if you add a marble to each of you your muffin cups (don't know what else to call that; there are 12 in most muffin tins) so the marble sits outside the muffin liners, after they bake they'll kind of have a heart shape!
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