Strawberry Olive Oil Muffins

I have thought about making an olive oil cake for awhile, but turned that desire into making muffins. Basically instead of butter you use olive oil as the fat in the batter. Apparently it's fairly common practice in many Mediterranean countries. It's not something I'd do all of the time, but it was a fun experiment and made for some tasty and super moist muffins that were incredibly tender. I found a recipe that I really liked, but it was done by weight. I decided to bust out the scale and weigh all of my ingredients, but then I realized how huge of a batch I was going to make. At that moment I threw the recipe out of the window and decided to wing it with my own ratios. Pretty happy how they turned out...

Strawberry Olive Oil Muffins

yields 12 muffins

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 pint strawberries, chopped
• turbinado sugar, for topping

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a muffin pan with paper liners.
2. In small bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and lemon zest.
3. In a large bowl, mix together the olive oil, vanilla extract, milk, and eggs.
4. Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet until just combined.
5. Fold in the chopped strawberries.
6. Divide batter evenly in the muffin pan.
7. Sprinkle tops with turbinado sugar.
8. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out cleanly.
9. Cool for several minutes then transfer to a wire cooling rack.