Red currant muffins

These red currant muffins are lovely light, cakey muffins full of tart little red currants, fresh from the market. This is the perfect recipe to throw together with any of the summer berries you can find. Bake it in a cake pan to cut and serve later, or in a muffin tin for summery breakfasts and snacks.

Red currants are definitely more common in European countries than they are in North America. The season is short and currants hit the market stands in July. Currants are tart and can vary in colour: there are white currants, red currants, and even black currants (known as cassis in French).

You can add currants to jams (like this strawberry and red currant jam), muffins (like in the red currant muffin recipe below), and even cakes (like in this simple blackcurrant cake). If you'd like to see more ideas, read about baking with fresh currants.

Jump to:

• What you need to make muffins with red currants
• Are currants the same fruit as dried currants?
• Making muffins with red currants
• Crispy sugary muffin topping
• Helpful tools to make muffins
• Storage
• How to defrost muffins
• Other muffins fruit to try
• 📖 Recipe

What you need to make muffins with red currants

The red currants season is short and will inevitably require a special trip to your local market to get your hands on some. But otherwise, you will need mostly pantry and fridge staples:

• To make the muffins
  • butter, preferably unsalted though salted butter will also work. You will omit the salt in the muffin batter if you choose to bake with salted butter.
  • granulated sugar—brown sugar could work but choose light brown sugar to avoid overpowering the honey
  • large eggs, don't use smaller eggs because your batter may be too dry and the muffins won't be tender
  • milk is included with the wet ingredients to make sure these muffins are moist
  • vanilla extract is added to enhance the flavour in the batter—feel free to use store-bought or homemade vanilla extract!
  • all-purpose flour (or half all-purpose and half whole wheat flour) is needed to bind all the ingredients together and give the muffins more structure
  • baking powder and baking soda are needed here to improve the rise instead of just baking powder alone, without baking soda. Read up on baking soda vs baking powder if you are unsure about the difference between them
  • salt is really important to bring out the sweet vanilla flavour which can get lost. Don't skip it. I like to use Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt, but table salt will work, though the muffins will be saltier and you may want to halve the salt in that case.
  • fresh red currants–stripped and separated from the stems and branches
• To make the sugar topping
  • butter, preferably unsalted butter because you will add salt to the streusel, but if you have salted, it will work. Just adjust the salt in the recipe accordingly, otherwise, your topping may be too salty
  • granulated sugar though brown sugar would also work here and would add to the molasses flavour
  • all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour will work in the streusel. It gives the streusel a little body so that the paste of butter and sugar doesn't melt all over the muffin tops
  • sliced almonds

Are currants the same fruit as dried currants?

Red currants (or white/black currants) are not the same as dried currants and if you dried a bunch of red currants, you would not have dried currants like what you buy in stores. Dried currants come from small grapes known as Corinthian grapes (raisins de Corinthe in French). And these tiny grapes are dried to form what is called dried currants, just like regular grapes are dried into raisins.

This recipe was adapted from Fine Cooking magazine, but I changed the mixing method significantly and I also added a crispy sugar topping. These are lovely light, cakey muffins full of tart little red currants, fresh from the market. This is the perfect recipe to throw together with any of the summer berries you can find. Bake it in a cake pan to cut and serve later, or in a muffin tin for summery breakfasts and snacks.

Making muffins with red currants

The mixing method I used for this muffin recipe is the reversed creaming method. All the dry ingredients and the sugar are whisked together, then the softened butter is worked into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles sand. At that point, you add the wet ingredients (which are already mixed together before adding them to the dry mixture).

I prefer this method over the muffin method or the two-bowl method for two reasons:

1. I like to bake my muffins with butter, but incorporating the melted butter with the cold wet ingredients makes it clump and then it doesn't incorporate evenly into the muffin batter in the end.
2. You could first incorporate wet and dry ingredients, then stir in the melted butter into the muffin batter, but for this, I find that adds too many steps and it can be hard to incorporate a liquid fat properly in an already mixed batter, which leads to more mixing, which isn't ideal!
3. I don't want to use any small electric appliance for muffins, so the creaming method is out: muffins should be easy! 

This is the easiest way I've found to bake muffins with butter and to incorporate the butter easily. This method works great! Try it!

Crispy sugary muffin topping

I've made these red currants plain, garnished with just sliced almonds before baking, and I've baked them with a streusel topping (made of butter, sugar, flour, and ground almonds). Another interesting topping is a crispy sugar topping made from roughly equal parts, by weight, of butter, sugar, and flour. This sugar paste is broken up into pieces and scattered over the muffin tops before baking.

In the oven, the sugar paste melts quickly, forming a crispy sweet coating on the muffin top that is super tasty, adding a good amount of crunch.

Since currants come in a variety of colours with varying levels of sweetness and tartness, you can bake these muffins with any fresh currants, interchangeably. But because fresh currants only grow in certain parts of the world, if you can't find currants at all, wild blueberries (or other blueberries) are a good substitute for currants, though a little sweeter and less tart than red currants. You could also try raspberries, but you should freeze the raspberries before folding them in because they are very delicate.

Helpful tools to make muffins

These red currant muffins are easy to make and I like to mix them by hand, which means you don't need a special electric mixer or a stand mixer. Still, there are a few tools that will make your muffin-baking sessions a little easier:

1. Muffin pans: for regular muffins, you can't get away without a muffin pan. And if you can, please invest in two 6-cup muffin pans (like this Wilton pan on Amazon) or one bigger 12-cup muffin pan (like these Wilton pans on Amazon). This way you will be ready to make full batches of most recipes, which can yield anywhere from 8 to 12 muffins, depending on how much batter you scoop per cup. 
2. Paper liners, parchment liners, silicone liners: we can debate over which is better for muffins, but personally, I like disposable paper liners (like these on Amazon that you would use for cupcakes too). For lower-fat muffins or muffins with less sugar, these can stick to paper liners. In this case, use parchment liners (Amazon) or silicone liners (Amazon). Savoury muffins, for example, work best baked in either of these.
3. Large cookie scoops: Some call them "dishers" and they are the most reliable scoops I've found on Amazon. They can handle firm doughs without breaking because the release mechanism is separate from the handle! This gives you a better, firm grip on the handle, without the risk of breaking the leaver. The handles are different colours according to the size. 
4. Cake tester and/or instant-read thermometer: if you bake a lot, you can probably gently poke muffins with your fingertip and instinctively know when they are done baking. The rest of us have to use a cake tester or thermometer to check if the muffins are done baking.

Storage

You can store these muffins at room temperature, covered, for about 3 days. Otherwise, they will go stale.

For longer storage, I suggest freezing the muffins once they've cooled down completely to room temperature. They freeze really well! Freeze them in the muffin trays or on a sheet pan until frozen solid, then transfer them to a freezer bag to store for up to 2 months.

Other muffins fruit to try

If you need more fruit muffin inspiration, try these honey blueberry muffins, rhubarb muffins, or these plum coffee cake muffins. And if it's not summer, my go-to recipe is for these date bran muffins, which is my all-time favourite muffin, even if it's not really cool.

📖 Recipe