Cherry Chocolate Chip Muffins

Prepared with a basic muffin recipe, these delicious, pretty pink muffins come to life with chocolate chips and candied red cherries! These are a great treat for your favourite Valentine or pile them into a container and take them to the office for your workmates!

If you’re much like me, you’re often left with ingredients that you need to use up. For example, I had a lot of candied cherries left over from my Christmas baking. I needed to find a way to use them. These muffins were just the answer!

If you’ve been reading my posts for long, you will no doubt have read that I love to use Paradise Inc. products when baking with candied cherries, dried fruits, and peels. If you need candied cherries to make these muffins, I highly recommend these candied red cherries.

I think everyone has a basic muffin recipe on hand. But, if you don’t, please keep the muffin recipe and claim it as your own. It’s one of my go-to recipes. I can change out the ingredients and get a new muffin every single time!

In this instance, I decided to add the candied cherries, along with chocolate chips, and a little bit of pink food colouring just to emphasize the fact that these muffins were packed with chopped cherries. Plus, it’s close to Valentine’s day, so why not!?

HOW BASIC ARE THEY?

When I say these muffins are basic, I’m not kidding! All you need is flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, eggs, vanilla, and milk. I bet those ingredients can be found in every pantry/fridge anyway. If you love to bake, I bet you already have all of the ingredients on hand already!

To be honest, I much prefer to make muffins rather than cupcakes. Muffins are much more forgiving and you don’t need to fuss with decorating them. Plus, is it just me or are cupcakes these days more frosting than cake!? Skip the frosting and make muffins!

HOW TO MAKE CHERRY CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS

Begin by preheating your oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or generously coat the muffin tin cavities with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl, beat together the butter, milk, eggs, and vanilla until well incorporated. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until combined with a spatula. Next, stir in the chopped candied cherries and the chocolate chips. Evenly share the batter between the 12 muffin liners. (I like to use a cookie scoop to get even amounts.)

Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 3-5 minutes. Remove muffins from muffin tin and place on a wire cooling rack to finish cooling.

WHAT ARE SOME OTHER FLAVOUR COMBINATIONS?

If you want to change the flavour, you will need to pay attention to only 3 of the ingredients. Those ingredients are cherries, chocolate chips, and vanilla extract.

Let’s see – try adding coconut, very well-drained canned pineapple, and coconut extract. How about fresh blueberries, lemon zest, and lemon juice? Oh, for the kids, try chocolate chips and toffee bits – yum!