Strawberry Banana Smoothie

It has been raining non-stop for days... very gloomy out. I can't think of a better way to chase the rainy gloom blues away than to make a summery Strawberry Banana Smoothie. This is more of an "orange julius-like" version, but feel free to substitute yogurt for the milk if you like your smoothies a bit thicker.

Strawberry Banana Smoothie

Makes 2 generous portions

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 cups milk

• 1 banana

• strawberries (as many as you like - frozen berries are great)

• 1 tbsp. sugar (or more to taste)

• a splash of pure vanilla extract (use the good stuff)

• ice (optional)

Directions

1. Put all the ingredients into a blender and froth it up. Delish!

Now for a few rainy day photos.

You just never know what you're going to come across in the country... I think this is an Emu, but this city girl isn't completely sure. Whatever it is, it's nice to see I'm not the only one who had a bad hair day with all this rain!

Got this shot while sitting in a parking lot waiting for the kids.

Thanks for visiting.

Strawberry Cream Muffins

MOIST Strawberry Muffins! This is a twist on a blueberry muffin recipe I have. I had an abundance of ripe strawberries on hand one day, so I tweaked the recipe a bit and boy, were they a hit.

In a bowl, dice the strawberries and sprinkle them with a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Stir well and let them sit and macerate for 30-60 minutes.

They'll get all juicy like this. Don't discard the juice... it adds wonderful flavor and moisture to the muffins!

In the meantime, bring the butter to room temperature. I didn't plan ahead well and all my butter was frozen, so I cut it into 1/2 tbsp. size pats and placed them in my mixing bowl like this. By the time the strawberries were all juicy, the butter was soft enough to proceed.

Whisk the flour, salt, and baking powder together; set aside.

Measure the milk; set aside.

With a hand held blender, beat together the room temp butter, remaining sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

Now it's time to start adding the reserved ingredients alternately. Add them in this order exactly, blending after each addition:

• 1/3 dry

• 1/2 milk

• 1/3 dry

• 1/2 milk

• 1/3 dry

(note - I've accidentally switched the order of adding the wet and dry ingredients and the recipe didn't turn out well, so be sure to do dry, wet, dry, wet, dry)

Now gently fold in the strawberries and all their exuded juices... every last drop!

I've found these particular muffins stick like crazy to traditional muffin tins (don't have any silicone pans, so I don't know how that would be), and they stick like crazy to standard paper cupcake liners, but for some reason, they don't stick to foil cupcake liners.

I remove the paper liners and just use the foil.

I save the liners to use for other cupcake projects.

Okay, into a preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes. If you like, you can sprinkle the tops with vanilla sugar or cinnamon sugar before they go into the oven. The kids like it, but I find it makes for a messier muffin. Tip, be sure the top of your muffin tin is well greased for easy removal. I really like Baker's Joy - it works very well.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but these muffins are really moist (sorry, bad photo). I sure hope you'll give them a try.

Strawberry Cream Muffins

makes 12 muffins

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

• 1 cup sugar (use 2-3 tbsp to macerate strawberries)

• 2 large eggs

• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (very important to use the best in this recipe)

• 2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt

• 2 cups all purpose flour

• 1/2 cup milk

• 1 1/2 cups diced and strawberries (macerate as directed above)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375F.

2. With a hand held blender, beat butter, sugar, eggs, and pure vanilla extract.

3. In a separate bowl blend flour, salt, and baking powder.

4. Mix as instructed above (dry, wet, dry, wet, dry).

5. Fold in strawberries and their juices.

6. Pour batter into foil lined muffin tin and bake for 25-30 minutes.

7. Cool completely before you devour... and you will devour these muffins!

Fun News - Bunny from Bunny's Warm Oven liked these muffins so much that she wrote about them on her blog. Go on over and take a look - I LOVE her photos!