Sugared Mango Love Muffins

There are few things in life as beautiful as a ginormous, glorious sugar topped muffin. You can tell when a muffin is going to be an experience. It has a look about it that is inviting. Have you ever eaten a tiny biscuit-like muffin only to ask yourself why you wasted the calories? I have. I have also learned that to make a great (not good but great) muffin which will not leave its audience in regret, you must require a few things from your recipe.

1. It must be tasty. If not, why bother?
2. It must not be the perfect texture… not too soggy, spongy or dry.
3. It must be ginormous or if its a mini muffin it must at least appear ginormous.
4. It must have a glorious heaping amount of streusel or another fun to drool over topper.

Easy as that, right? Nope! A muffin requires love to make. Love requires patience, care and attention to details. A love muffin isn’t the kind of girl you can just take out once and than ditch. She is worth every bit of effort required of you. She is an investment.

That said, let’s get started!

To make the fruit for this muffin, we are making a mango jelly which will be very flavorful. Another benefit is that the pieces of mangos will not become soggy as they might of you just dropped them into your muffin dough.

Peel one ripe mango, chop into medium size pieces and add to sauce pan. Using a potato masher, press mango into even smaller little pieces.

Mix in one cup of sugar and about two teaspoons of lemon juice. Allow jelly to boil for almost 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then allow to cook on low heat for another 10 minutes.

When done, you will have this lovely mango jelly. We could stop there since this would be delicious in danish or on toast but today we are focusing on the glorious muffin so savor this moment as long as you like & then when you’re ready, feel free to scroll down for more goodness.

Cream together 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) of butter, 1 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Mix in 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of baking powder.

Drop in one egg, 1 cup of Odwalla Mango Tango juice (hey, I did say this was a commitment) and 2 cups of flour

The perfect addition to these muffins? Our lovely mango jelly! Mix’er up! Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Although I made my streusel in a regular bowl today, I highly recommend using a food processor instead.

Here are the streusel ingredients:

• 1 stick of butter
• 1 1/2 cup of flour
• 2/3 cup of powdered sugar
• dash of salt
• 1 egg

Mix until crumbly.

Only fitting that these love muffins were placed into my very well-loved pan. This is a large muffin pan with room for 6 muffins at a time (just enough for this recipe) or you can make 12 regular muffins. Fill muffin tins about 1/2 way full.

Wait! Stop the presses! Time to break it down with some struesel! “But we’re only half way through?” you ask? Yes, but these aren’t just any muffins. These are glorious muffins! We must have struesel in the middle. It’s a way of bringing some of the beautiful muffin top into the mid-muffin experience.

Okay, at ease. You can now place the last dollops of muffin mix on top of the streusel… but wait. It gets even better. There’s more XOXOXO coming your way.

Oh how sweet it is! A topper of more streusel and then a dose of sugar over the top with some to spare. Bake for about 30 minutes or until fork comes out clean.

You know the muffin… the special one. She is so sweet, tasty and buttery that you aren’t even sure if you need butter. This is her. Her name is Love Muffin. I’ll leave you two alone so you can get to know one another.