Cherry Yoghurt Muffins (Dear Joe, there's nothing worse than a stunted muffin)
Tall and not too sweet
Dear Joe,
The cherry tree is an 8-minute run from home. The lane you have to run along to get to the tree is called the Devil's Backbone, but the path isn't devilish at all. It’s beautiful – open fields, cows and sheep. I run there a lot, along the backbone, through the village to a bridge over the dual carriageway, and then up the hill, to the view. It’s a view that shows Oxford for the bowl that it is – really, a scooped-out space in hills big enough to fit a city. It’s the bridge over the dual carriageway that’s my favourite part: I like to stand in the centre and look at the cars moving fast in opposite directions. You were here for my 27th birthday the other weekend, and while I sat and watched you make breakfast for Libby, we, in other words, congratulated each other for being the age we were. As I’m writing this, I’m boiling a single lemon to blitz up and put in a cake. I’ve got that Wendy Cope poem in my head - At lunchtime I bought a huge orange - the size of it made us all laugh…And that orange, it made me so happy... - I ran on my birthday in the morning, past the tree, and all the cherries had gone. Five days earlier, it had been full. I think that’s what stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it; the tree was dripping. I went straight back after my run. I’ve learned that I am not a systematic picker, but I am quick; I stood under the tree and saw red, 5 minutes later, I had sticky fingers and a Tupperware full of cherries. Paradise, it seems, is along the devil's backbone. I was so pleased with myself that I had to use the cherries immediately, so I pivoted to tall cherry muffins. Tall because there is nothing worse than a stunted muffin. The recipe I was working from is one of my old blueberry muffin recipes that uses sour cream; it’s unlikely that I, or you, have sour cream in the fridge on a regular weeknight, so here they work with yoghurt. They are so unbelievably quick to pull together, and not too sweet - the beauty of a homemade muffin being that you don’t have to worry about shelf life, and so you don’t have to pump them with unnecessary quantities of sugar. These muffins are sustaining and comforting, exactly what you would want for breakfast, possibly with a fried egg on the side, or at 7 pm, eaten in a clean kitchen, after the workday is done.
Set the oven to 190 / 170 fan. Line a muffin tray with 6 paper cases (of course, double the recipe if you want to make a full 12-hole tray of muffins). Remove stalks and pips from the cherries - you want to end with 200g prepared fruit. Reserve 50g of the cherries to top the muffins. Very roughly mash and chop up the remaining fruit – you don’t want a cherry pulp, just a bit of texture and some juices released. Melt 65g butter and set aside. In a jug or bowl, beat to combine 125g yoghurt, 1 tbs lemon juice, 1tsp vanilla extract and a medium egg. In a separate bowl, combine 170g plain flour, 80g sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, and a generous pinch of salt. Gently stir the yoghurt mix, the melted butter and the chopped cherries into the bowl with the flour, stopping as soon as the mix comes together. It’s ok if there are a few dry patches of flour left. Fill the muffin cases to the tops with batter. Spread the remaining cherries over the muffins then bake for 25 – 30 mins, or until a knife inserted into the cakes comes out with a few moist crumbs.
Love Caitlin x