Grilled Cherry Muffins #Muffin Monday

Grilled cherries and greek yogurt flavor this sweetly wholesome breakfast treat.

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The first bag of cherries to enter our house gets demolished in a matter of hours. My daughter and I  have had pit spitting contests, the kitchen trash becomes a spittoon, and my spouse always seems to step on the sole stem that ends up on the floor.

Our whole family enjoys fresh cherries, so when they go on sale at the local grocery store I buy them. And buy them, and buy them, and buy them. After a few bags, I'll looking for other ways to enjoy fresh cherries. I've chopped them up with peaches to make a fresh (i.e., not canned) Cherry Peach Salsa.  I've tossed them in smoothies. Most of the time, though, I pop them in my mouth, one after another.

Last summer, while having a blast with our new grill, I grilled cherries. Game changer! If you haven't grilled cherries, you should. They are totally tasty and exceptionally easy. Rinse whole cherries (stem and all), toss into a bowl, splash with a bit of cooking oil to coat . . . and they are ready to go on the grill. How easy is that? I used my grill basket, and had my gas grill preheated to medium heat. Stirring occasionally, my cherries were grilled in 8 to 10 minutes.

After you take the cherries off the grill, pick up the stem end and pop the (slightly cooled) cherry in your mouth. Yum! Spit out the pit (heck, you're probably outside already) and enjoy that buttery goodness a moment longer. It's not exactly like a bite of cherry pie filling, but it's on the spectrum.

Once you have eaten your fill of grilled cherries (and before that, your fill of fresh cherries), save the rest for these muffins. Since the texture of cooled, pitted, grilled cherries is somewhat similar to applesauce or cherry pie filling, I looked in my muffin mentor Muffins: A Cookbook (Amazon link, not affiliate though) for inspiration. This cookbook was written by a couple of school chums of my mom, and I like to refer to it whenever I'm trying something new.

I adapted the Cherry Surprise muffin recipe found in the cookbook. I swapped in grilled cherries for the pie filling, I combined the cherries with the liquid ingredients, I subbed some vegetable oil instead of all butter, some whole wheat flour instead of all all purpose flour, and switched to brown sugar because I had a bunch on hand.

For more recipes using cherries, please see my Cherry Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

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Note: this recipe calls for grilled cherries. As described above--toss whole fresh cherries with a splash of vegetable oil and grill over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool, pit, and chop.

Grilled Cherry Muffins

Ingredients

• 1 large egg
• 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
• ¼ stick butter, melted (1 ounce by weight and volume)
• 1 ounce vegetable oil (I used a glass measuring cup to melt the butter and added oil up to the ¼ cup mark)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ⅓ cup milk
• ⅓ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup chopped grilled cherries (pitted)
• 1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt (I use kosher)

Instructions

1. If you haven't grilled your cherries, go do so. I'll wait. You should probably double or triple the amount you're grilling since you're going to want to eat some of them.
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a 12 well muffin pan with oil spray, or line with paper liners. Or get all fancy like I did with the paper/foil combo. Which seems like overkill to me.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together egg and yogurt. Whisk in the fats, vanilla, milk and brown sugar until thoroughly combined.
4. Dump the chopped grilled cherries on top, and stir to combine.
5. Dump the remaining ingredients on top of the cherry mixture and stir until just mixed. The batter will be rough, and that's OK.
6. Scoop batter into prepared pan.
7. Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool in pan for another 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to finish cooling.

What are you waiting for? Get cherries, get grilling, and let's make some muffins! Why? Because it's Muffin Monday, that's why!

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board.

Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

Here's what we're baking up this month!

• Banana Bread and Chocolate Muffins from Making Miracles
• Chocolate Chip Blood Orange Muffins from Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Grilled Cherry Muffins from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Jamaican Me Hungry Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Margarita Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Old Fashioned Donut Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Pancake Muffins from Passion Kneaded
• Sweet Corn Muffins from Food Lust People Love