Kid Friendly,  Muffins

A Lighter Lemon Muffin

Lemon was on my mind yesterday and I was debating between making a lemon tart or lemon muffins. Well with my kids in mind, I went with lemon muffins. I decided to take my recipe to a new level. I had already made changes to it and made it several times but this time I decided to make more. For some reason I find pleasure in dissecting a recipe. Weird, I know. Believe me there are recipes that I won’t do this too if I really want something sweet!

Original recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of sugar and I reduced it to 1 1/2 cups. Previously I had only reduced the sugar to 2 cups. Reduced oil from 1 1/4 cups to 1/2 cup and then added 1/2 cup of greek yogurt. Previously I just reduced the oil and didn’t replace it with anything but I thought I would add greek yogurt to see what would happen. If I can, I generally replace oil with applesauce but this is a lemon muffin and I thought that the applesauce might take away from the lemon flavor. I used the zest and juice of two lemons to really get a fresh lemon flavor. I didn’t add poppy seeds this time because my kids aren’t too fond of them but sometimes I will make half of the batch with poppy seeds and the other half without.

I was a little worried about the texture being gummy from adding the yogurt but that didn’t happen. Kids loved them, hubby loved them, I loved them. So now I can make them with a little less sugar and add yogurt if I want. Muffins lasted less than 24 hours in our house!

Lemon Muffins
adapted from this recipe

3 cups all purpose flour
1  teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cups sugar
Zest from 2 lemons
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup vanilla greek yogurt
3 eggs
1 cup milk
Juice from 2 lemons
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven 350 degrees.

In bowl of mixer add the dry ingredients and mix on low until incorporated. Add zest to dry ingredients and mix. In separate medium bowl add oil, yogurt, eggs, lemon juice, milk, and vanilla extract. Wisk lightly. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just until everything is incorporated and batter is smooth. Do not over mix. Stop to scrape sides if needed. Prepare muffin pans with nonstick spray or cupcake liners. Fill each cup about 3/4 of the way full. I use a large scoop to fill the muffin cups and it makes exactly 24 muffins. Bake for 20-25 minutes until cake tester comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

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