Cherry Amaretti Muffins

During the summer, I buy cherries when they're in season and cheap and spend a happy half hour pitting them before eating some and freezing the rest for baking later in the year.  One of the best investments I've ever made is a cherry pitter which makes short shrift of taking the stones out of the cherries without mangling the delicate fruit.  According to The Hubs, it sounds like a machine gun as I "phut phut" my way through a few punnets but it makes life so much easier and for a tenner, it's definitely worth the investment.

This is a great recipe when you've forgotten to take the butter out of the fridge but want to bake something lovely - buttermilk and oil work together to create a really moist muffin, while cherries straight from the freezer and a handful of amaretti biscuits from the cupboard bring flavour and crunch to a regular run of the mill bake.

Cherry Amaretti Muffins

180ml Buttermilk
60ml Water
160ml Rapeseed Oil
1 Egg

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

240g Plain Flour
120g Sugar

1 tsp baking powder

200g Cherries, pitted and halved

75g Amaretti Biscuits, crushed

Preheat oven to 180c / Gas Mark 4 and line two muffin tins with 20 muffin cases

Mix the buttermilk, water, rapeseed oil, egg and vanilla together in a large mixing bowl or in a food mixer. Now add the flour, sugar, and baking powder and fold in, until well incorporated. Now, stir in the cherries. 

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cups, filling each about ¾ full and sprinkle with the crushed amaretti biscuits. 

Bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.   Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool fully.