It’s strawberry season in Florida!
Everywhere you go – there are specials featuring strawberries! From daquiris made from fresh strawberry puree to incredible shortcakes and pies for which you will gladly blow any diet. And sorry California, but there’s nothing quite like a Florida strawberry. They can be oddly shaped and have big floppy leaves – but OMG their juiciness and depth of “strawberriness” is second to none. It’s almost like they’ve been hit with a little strawberry extract!
The problem is – they are so inexpensive this time of year ($3.50 for 2lbs) and are so plentiful
you are compelled to buy them constantly – with every good intention of using them up – smoothies every morning, over ice cream, in yogurt parfaits (Mr. Single’s favorite), the list goes on.
What happens quite often (as it does with most good intentions), the berries are forgotten, either in the back of the refrigerator or on the counter – until that one morning when you realize you need to do something!
I had just that idea this morning. – The week got away from me – and the berries on the bottom had given up! When I lifted the large container of beautiful strawberries off the counter, there was a pool of vibrant crimson syrup all over the counter! It smelled divine – but looked like a crime scene!
So, I immediately went into salvage mode! I rescued about 2 cups of diced deliciousness. We hadn’t had breakfast yet, and there was this strawberry muffin recipe that I’d been wanting to try – and with a quick ingredient check – as they say in the UK, “Bob’s your Uncle and Fanny’s your Aunt” – we’ve got killer healthy strawberry muffins! Best thing – the batter is made in the food processor!
Ingredients:
- 2 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/8 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 cup baking stevia
- 1/4 cup Splenda or Truvia Brown Sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup Dannon Light & Fit Vanilla Greek Yogurt (fat free)
- 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh strawberries (divided)
Make the Magic: (pics below for reference)
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Spray a 12 opening muffin tin well.
- In the bowl of a food processor with a chopping blade, pour in the old fashioned oats. Process until the mixture resembles flour. (You just made oat flour!)
- Add in the following: baking powder, baking soda, stevia and brown sugar. Pulse a few times to combine.
- Add in the eggs and yogurt and process until the batter looks like wet sand.
- Empty the batter into a large mixing bowl.
- Carefully fold in most of the chopped strawberries.
- Divide the batter into the muffin tin. I use an ice cream scoop.
- Top each muffin with some additional strawberries.
- Bake at 400 for 15 – 20 minutes. Every oven is different – so I like to start checking at 15 minutes with the toothpick test. At that point I can just how much longer. In my VA oven it’s 18 minutes. The tops should be a little brown and the toothpick should come out clean.
Oat Flour!
Add some strawberry chunks to the top of each muffin – they roast nicely!
I’ve made these a few times since, here are some notes:
- These are best the same day – but aren’t bad the next day with a quick zap in the microwave.
- These don’t have any wheat flour in them – so check on the gluten-free aspect of this recipe.
- For anyone doing the new Weight Watchers SmartPoints program – I used the iPhone app and calculated the SmartPoints for these muffins to be 5 points for 2 muffins. They are quite filling and delicious with a cup of coffee or tea.
- You can absolutely use other berries.