Cardamom and Tea

Cherry Muffins

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These cherry muffins are fluffy and tender with a moist, slightly custardy crumb. If you’re looking for something more like a coffee shop/bakery-style muffin (with a bready texture and crumbly streusel top), these are not the ones for you. These muffins are more cake-like than scone-like. If that sounds like the muffin for you, jump to the recipe to hit the ground running. To read more about what makes this particular recipe my favorite, read on.

cherry muffins
cherry muffins

What I love about these cherry muffins

1. Their tender crumb

These cherry muffins have a very tender, moist crumb, and that’s because this recipe is made with an extra egg where you’d otherwise use sour cream. The extra egg gives them a wonderful custardy flavor and a texture that’s hard to beat. If you like French toast, egg tarts, and soufflé pancakes, you’ll love it.

2. They just happen to be dairy-free

I created this muffin batter in pursuit of a really good dairy-free muffin recipe (with no butter and no milk products), but it soon became my favorite muffin batter of all time, and now I just use it even when the recipe doesn’t need to be dairy-free. I strongly prefer it over muffins made with yogurt, buttermilk, or sour cream. So if you can’t eat dairy, I highly recommend using soy milk in the recipe below. Whether or not you avoid dairy, you will not be disappointed.

3. You can use either fresh or frozen berries.

Just make sure you don’t thaw before adding to the batter.

One of the downsides of using frozen in a typical recipe is their tendency to stain batter greenish gray. But that won’t happen with this recipe, since we are not using baking soda. Berries giving off juices + an alkaline environment is what causes that greenish tint. We all know baking soda is a very alkaline ingredient, so omitting it is a good start. But many baking powder brands are also somewhat alkaline (not neutral, as you might expect!), so it’s also important not to overdo it on the baking powder. This recipe has you covered on both counts.

4. Simple ingredients + method.

This is the easiest way to make cherry muffins in one bowl. You don’t need a stand mixer or any equipment more specialized than a muffin tin. In fact, using a stand mixer would risk over-mixing them, which is the one thing you should avoid.

cherry muffins
cherry muffins
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Cherry Muffins (one-bowl, fresh or frozen)

cherry muffins
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Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup (105g) oil*
  • 2/3 cup (130g) granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup (120g) whole milk (or soy milk)
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tsp almond flavor (optional)
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1 3/4 cups (225g) all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 1/2 cups (190g) pitted cherries** (plus more for decorating)
  • Optional: coarse sugar (like demerara, turbinado, or sanding sugar)

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 425°F [220°C]. Line a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.***
  2. Combine the oil, sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Stir together until the sugar begins to dissolve and you no longer see flecks of egg white or yolk. It should be very homogenous.
  3. Place a fine mesh sieve over the wet ingredients (careful that it does not touch them). Measure your flour and baking powder right into the sieve. Sift directly into the wet ingredients.
  4. Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stopping when there are still visible streaks of flour. Add the cherries and switch to a spatula. Fold together until the cherries are evenly distributed and there are no longer visible pockets of flour. Do not overmix.
  5. Spoon the batter evenly into the 12 lined muffin tin wells. If using, sprinkle with a few additional cherries and a little coarse sugar.
  6. Bake for 10 minutes at 425°F [220°C], then lower the temperature to 350°F [180°C] and bake for another 10 minutes (20 minutes total). They are done once you can insert a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean.

Notes

* For this recipe, use any oil that is a liquid while at room temperature. I used canola to develop it, but it also works great with olive oil (either light or extra virgin if you enjoy the flavor in baked goods—I love baking with extra virgin olive oil, but it’s a personal preference). Remember that whatever oil you use, its flavor will come through, so use a neutral one or one whose flavor you want.

** You can use either fresh or frozen here. If you use frozen, don’t thaw them first—just add them to the batter frozen. Also watch out for pits—frozen ones aren’t always pitted perfectly (and for that matter, neither are ones you pit yourself!). I recommend using a dedicated cherry pitter for the task. I’ve tried other cherry pitting hacks, and most of them make a big mess.

*** If you don’t have cupcake liners, you can easily make them out of parchment paper. I don’t recommend simply greasing the muffin tins here—this batter tends to stick. Liners are advised!

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The Best Orange Curd

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Of the 500+ recipes I’ve written, I think I’ve only titled something “the best” one other time. Best is a subjective term. But I really believe that for the best orange curd, you must not add orange juice (ever), and hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll agree.

Nearly all recipes for orange curd feature orange juice, which makes sense on the surface. But if you ask me, that’s the ultimate orange curd sin. Why? Because OJ waters down both flavor and tartness. Orange juice is somewhat flavorful and a bit tart, but it falls short on both counts. For flavor, we must reach for orange zest, which is where most of an orange’s flavor lives. For tang, we must reach for lemon juice. It is the only thing that packs a punch strong enough to give orange curd some much-needed zip. Why not just use both lemon and orange juice? Read on to get the answer, or jump to the recipe if you’re already convinced.

TL/DR: orange zest + lemon juice (+ 0 orange juice) = the best orange curd ever.

orange curd
orange curd

My 3 reasons for using 100% lemon juice (0% orange juice):

1. No, it doesn’t turn out too tart.

Don’t believe me? Think of it this way: If you were making a lemon curd, you’d use 100% lemon juice, and it would not be too tart. This recipe uses those same proportions as a standard lemon curd. So it is as tart as a lemon curd, but with a distinctly orange flavor instead. And that’s because…

2. Flavor is more concentrated in the zest, which makes this curd taste very orangey.

If you want something to actually taste like orange, you must use orange zest. Juice will add a bit of orange flavor, but zest adds so much more.

Orange juice does contain some orange flavor. So why not just add both orange juice and lemon juice? Well, there is a limit to how much liquid we can add, so we need to make sure every liquid counts! If we skip the orange juice, we can save 100% of our liquid budget for very-tangy lemon juice.

And don’t worry…

3. Flavor is less concentrated in juice, so this curd does not taste lemony.

The lemon juice in this recipe is just there for tang, and does not add a ton of lemon flavor. You might catch a note of lemon, but orange is the entiely dominant flavor.

Perfectly tart, very orangey, not lemony. Now that’s a perfect orange curd.

orange curd
orange curd

What else I love about this orange curd recipe

The thing that makes it uniquely good is the lack of orange juice, but there are lots of other reasons to love it:

  1. It doesn’t require a double boiler. At least, for induction and gas stoves. If you’re using electric, you may want to use one to make sure it doesn’t curdle.
  2. It uses whole eggs instead of just egg yolks. Whenever I post about this, someone always says “but doesn’t it taste sulfury and eggy with those added whites?” But actually, egg yolks are far more sulfuric than whites—about 50-60% more! So no, it does not taste more sulfuric or eggier. It just tastes like a normal curd.
  3. You don’t need a thermometer to make it. If you watch the video in this post ahead of time, and then you pay very close attention to textural clues, you should be able to stop the cooking in time. Since we’re gradually reducing the heat as we go, it shouldn’t coast quickly past done, and you should have some wiggle room. Whisking in cold butter at the end helps to rapidly chill it, so just make sure your butter is nearby when you start.

Btw, if you want to make any citrus curd, my recipe uses all the same principles in this one. Grapefruit curd, mixed citrus, blood oranges—the sky’s the limit. If you can zest it, you can curd it.

Or check out my broader collection of curds if you’re looking for something like passion fruit or even hibiscus.

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The Best Orange Curd

orange curd
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  • Total Time: 15 minutes
  • Yield: about 1 1/2 cups

Ingredients

  • 2 large eggs
  • 3/4 cup [150g] granulated sugar
  • 2 Tbsp orange zest
  • 1/3 cup [80g] lemon juice*
  • 4 Tbsp [55g] unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces

Instructions

  1. Add the eggs, sugar, orange zest, and lemon juice to a blender or large food processor. Run for about 20 seconds to mix thoroughly. It should have no visible streaks of egg white.
  2. Once the eggs have blended in completely, transfer to a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Whisk constantly until it thickens significantly, being careful not to let it overheat and lower the heat gradually as it progresses. It will thicken at about 167 to 170°F [75 to 77°C], which takes about 10 minutes** to reach. Do not let it exceed 180°F [82°C].
  3. As soon as the curd thickens, remove from heat and immediately add the butter and whisk constantly until the butter melts completely.
  4. Chill completely.***

Storage: Store it in the fridge for 5 to 10 days, or in the freezer for much longer. In my freezer, it stays soft enough to scoop and lasts for months.

See the lemon curd video in this post for an example of how you might use this recipe. If the video does not appear in the intro, please disable ad block.

Notes

* This is not a typo—we’re using 100% lemon juice (0% orange juice) so that our curd turns out tart instead of bland and watery. We get all the orange flavor we need from the orange zest. See the whole explanation above the recipe if you’re curious how this works.

** This recipe is written for gas. If using induction, it will likely move much more quickly than this. If using electric, you may want to use a double boiler for this (if you do not, please note that times will vary wildly and unpredictably, and your curd may, well, curdle!)

***If you’re using this in a fruit tart (or something where you want it to set up in the baked good rather than in the jar), pour it directly into the baked shell while the curd is still hot and then chill the whole thing.

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