Clearly I have a lemon problem. I love lemons. I love yellow. And I love muffins. And if all of those things are baked together into one format, plus poppyseeds, sign me up for lots of 'em. I made orange poppyseed muffins as the inaugural muffin of muffin Monday in the UK but my fav is lemon poppyseed. I also have a large bag of poppyseeds that need to be used up.
The thing about muffin recipes, and most easy bake items, is they follow the same order of operations. Dry ingredients in large bowl, wet ingredients in small bowl, mix together, fold in bonus items, spoon out batter, bake and eat. Easy peasy.
So in this case, our bonus items are lemon zest and poppyseeds. Lemon zest (zest in general) is very strong and a little goes a long way. The one down side to zest is the actual zesting. Many a knuckle skin has been lost to an overzealous zesting and there's a whole graveyard for sponges that died trying to clean the graters. But I've found that a bottle brush (like for baby bottles) is perfect for cleaning a zester! Pro tip, you're welcome.
At any rate, the zest is added to the sugar and poppyseeds are folded in last. An all around team effort.
Recipe
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
2/3 cup refined sugar (or light brown sugar)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 Tablespoons poppyseeds
1 Tablespoon grated lemon zest
Preheat the oven to 400F. Prepare the muffin pan and set aside.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
In another bowl, whisk together the melted butter, milk, eggs and vanilla with the sugar and lemon zest.
Carefully add the butter mixture to the dry ingredients and fold together until incorporated.
Add the poppyseeds and fold together until evenly mixed.
Fill the muffin cups half-way and bake until golden brown.
As you know, my baking pan situation of late is somewhat diminished. This hasn't stopped the creation of delicious baked goods and healthy meals though! But it is hard to supplement for a muffin pan. I was hanging out with coworkers after going trampolining (it's a real thing) and somehow muffins came up and I did this impression of the Gingerbread Man from Shrek being interrogated (around 30 second mark for the muffin man bit):
It was certainly amusing to them although not everyone knew what I was talking about so it was slightly embarrassing for me. But that brought us to the old tradition of Muffin Monday where I would bring muffins to work on Mondays. Offended that I hadn't done so yet in London, I explained to them that I didn't have a muffin pan. Desperate for muffins, a colleague offered up her never-been-used-and-unlikely-to-ever-be-used muffin pan to the cause.
And so, Muffin Monday returns!! I've been wanting to make poppyseed muffins for awhile because lemon poppyseed is irresisitable to me but the woman who donated the muffin pan favors orange poppyseed so I was happy to oblige. It really just involved switching lemon zest and orange zest, nbd.
Sugar and orange zest are combined, the basic step in making a homemade scrub (in case you were wondering). You start to smell the orange fragrance enhance immediately. Set that aside, taking some good deep whiffs first. In a separate bowl, we get the dry ingredients and in yet another bowl, the wet ingredients (butter not included yet). The dry ingredients should be in the largest bowl because we're adding everything to this. First the sugar mixture gets stirred in.
Then the butter is cut into the flour mixture. I no longer have a pastry cutter but a knife, fork or your fingers work just fine. Dig a little well in the flour and pour in the wet ingredients. This is where the muscles come into play. Stir and stir and stir some more (add some folding in there for good measure) until everything is combined. Don't forget to add the poppyseeds once the batter starts to take form.
This batter got sticky and thick the more I combined the ingredients. I could see the magic happening. One problem I have with cold cut butter is the fact that I always end up with chunks of butter that melt and cook differently than when the butter is creamed. Alas, muffins still worked their magic but it was interesting to watch them bake up in different ways as a result.
These didn't taste overly orangey to me, I barely noticed the citrus in the final product. But I suppose lemon poppyseed muffins can be pretty mild on the citrus front as well. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could make a citrus glaze with orange juice (or lemon juice) and powdered sugar.
Preheat the oven to 375F (or 190C). Line your muffin tin and set aside.
In a small bowl, combine the sugar and zest. Stir with a fork until the zest is mixed in completely. The sugar should clump together as it takes on the moisture from the zest.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, yogurt, vanilla and juice.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Add the citrus sugar to the mix and stir to combine.
Cut in the cold butter until a coarse meal forms.
Create a well in the flour mixture and pour in the wet ingredients.
Stir in the citrus sugar. Stir until the ingredients are all mixed together and no flour is visible.
Fold in the poppyseeds.
Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin, filling each cup 1/2-3/4 of the way (you can adjust on the second round for a fuller muffin if needed).
Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown and cooked through.
The recipe should make 12 large muffins but I ended up with about 30 small muffins instead.
