Cherry Almond Muffins

I wanted to make muffins this morning and hand to work with what was around the house.  This is what came out.  If I were doing it again, I'd want them to be slightly more moist (they were about the consistency of a cornmeal muffin -- slightly crusty outside, which was good, but also a slightly dry & crumbly inside once they cooled, which was less good), but otherwise they were very tasty.  The comments on the site suggested using sour cream or applesauce to make them more moist, so maybe I'll try those.  Based on this bread recipe.

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
  
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup dried tart cherries -- I used 1/4 cup whole and 1/4 cup chopped, and I liked the whole better
• 3/8 cup milk
• 1 eggs
• 3 Tbs. butter, melted
• 1 Tbs. oil (this was an attempt to make them moister, use all butter if you want)
• 1 tsp. almond extract 

Mix the four dry ingredients together.  Add the cherries & mix to cover them.  In a separate bowl, mix the 5 wet ingredients.  Pour them into the dry mixture and mix until just combined (mine had streaks of egg still in it and it was fine; next time I'll try mixing it even less, still trying to get the hang of the muffin mixing method).  Butter six muffin cups & split batter between them; if you want muffins with tops, butter only five muffin cups -- these don't rise very much, so you can fill the cups basically to the top.  Bake at 350 until a knife comes out clean from the middle (or just before that would happen) -- I don't remember how long this took, but it was somewhere between 20-40 minutes.