Strawberry-Rhubarb Muffins

The new year and the new semester and the students are back and the building is full again and I am standing in front of my freshmen with a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and the knowledge that this book, despite everything, still works — still makes fourteen-year-olds sit up straight and pay attention and ask questions about justice and courage and whether doing the right thing is worth it when nobody else is doing the right thing, which is the question of our time and also the question of all time, and Atticus Finch, for all his limitations as a literary hero, still asks it better than most.

Noah's first tooth came in this week — David sent a photo, a blurry close-up of a tiny white nub emerging from a pink gum, and I looked at it and called Miriam in Tel Aviv and said, "The baby has a tooth," and Miriam said, "Which one?" and I said, "Bottom front, left," and Miriam said, "All the Rosen babies started with the bottom front left," and I don't know if this is true or if Miriam is constructing genealogical continuity from dental data, but I love her for it. The chain includes teeth, apparently.

Marvin has started repeating stories — not just questions, which he's been repeating for over a year, but entire stories, told from the beginning with the conviction of a man telling them for the first time. He told me the story of our first date three times this week. Each time, the details were slightly different — the restaurant changed, the movie changed, what I was wearing changed — but the ending was the same every time: "And I knew. I knew right away." I let him tell it. I let him tell it three times and I listened as if for the first time because that is the gift I can give him: the fiction of novelty, the kindness of pretending that every telling is the first telling, because for him it is. For Marvin, every telling is the first. And the ending is always the same. He knew. He knew right away.

There is something about a week like this one — Marvin and his stories, Noah and his tooth, thirty freshmen asking whether doing the right thing is worth it — that sends me straight to the kitchen on a Sunday morning, flour on the counter before I’ve finished my coffee. I wanted something that held both things at once: the tartness and the sweetness, the ache and the tenderness, the way love is rarely only one flavor. Strawberry-rhubarb muffins are exactly that. I made two dozen and brought half to school on Monday, and a student said, “These taste like something my grandma would make,” and I thought, yes — that is exactly the point.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 22 min | Total Time: 37 min | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus 1 tablespoon for topping
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup neutral oil (vegetable or canola)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled and diced small
3/4 cup fresh rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1/4-inch pieces

Instructions

Preheat & prep. Heat oven to 375°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners or grease well with butter or nonstick spray.
Mix dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon until evenly combined.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate medium bowl, whisk the eggs, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla extract until smooth and well blended.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently with a rubber spatula until just combined — a few small lumps are fine. Do not overmix.
Fold in fruit. Add the diced strawberries and rhubarb and fold them in gently with two or three strokes. The batter will be thick.
Fill & top. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Sprinkle the tops with the reserved tablespoon of sugar.
Bake. Bake for 20–22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean and the tops are lightly golden.
Cool. Let the muffins rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Best served slightly warm, but they keep at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Strawberry-Rhubarb Muffins — The Sweetness That Stays the Same