What to do when life hands you lemons?
My lemon tree is bursting with ripe lemons and you know – you HAVE to do something with them and so I frequently think of lemon poppyseed muffins. Easy to make, easy to get outta the house! Hello friend, would you care for a few fresh out of the oven delicious, tender and bright lemon poppyseed muffins? Yes? Ok, I’ll drop some off later…. 
. When you look at the below picture, know that I’d literally just taken a shopping bag full of lemons to yoga with me – spreading the love / lemons with my yogi friends. I think you’ll agree – that’s a Lotta Lemons!
I have no trouble figuring out what to do with Limes – Hello Margaritas and lime juice on everything mexican / southwest flavored. But Lemons? Why does my brain only go to lemon desserts? Lemon cake, lemon scones, lemon bars ?
Where did all the lemons come from?
As many of you know, we live in SoCal…so when we moved in we planted three lime trees, and two lemon trees. One lime tree wasn’t lime at all (Nursery mixup!) and we had Citron’s… They were HUGE, mostly pith and everyone I know was afraid to eat / use my mutant limes…so we had the tree pulled out. Now I have one very healthy and overactive lemon tree (see picture), one lemon tree begging for trimming and nutrition, and two previously very healthy lime trees that are also now begging for trimming and nutrition… I’m still wondering how this Chicago girl got herself to SoCal and why everything wants to die in my backyard, except for this particular lemon tree? But I digress…
Changing up Base Recipes as always…
Hubster says my recipes and cooking are like unicorns. You better enjoy it now – because you’ll never get it exactly the same again… LOL . It’s a bit of an overstatement but it is funny because it is sorta true. This is because before the blog I never wrote anything down. A pinch of this and a pinch of that. So in hopes of making these bad boys again I wrote this recipe down and am now adding to the blog. I found the base recipe on pinterest by the recipe critic (and of course doctored it up a bit for my preferences) and below is my version.
My friend Shawnee’s mom – who previously had shared with me that her banana bread is best ever because she uses sour cream in it. Thinking of that learning and searching my fridge, determining to use sour cream instead of Yogurt (in the original recipe) as an ode to Ms. Bazzell, and because I almost always have Low Fat Sour Cream in my fridge!
Literally – My Secret Ingredient
Before we get to the recipe – I want you to know that I’m spilling the beans on one of my most protected kitchen secrets ever. King Arthur Flour makes the most incredible flavoring called Fiori di Sicilia (FdS). I’m not sure when I first started using this stuff – but it’s legitimately incredible. I often use it instead of vanilla 1:1 for flavoring. However, it is more expensive than even PURE vanilla extract! I did re-read some of the literature on the KAF website and realized I could continue to use vanilla and then augment with the FdS to stretch it out a bit. Trust me on this. If you are making anything lemon-ish you should either substitute with FdS instead of vanilla or do some combo half vanilla half FdS. Get YO-SELF SOME ! You deserve it and you are welcome. I know you will thank me and come back for more of my lemon recipes that use FdS.
Ok – so back to the big ol’ lemon tree. Lots of lemons – how am I going to maintain my svelte figure with all these lemon desserts running through my brain?
Lemon Poppyseed Muffins
Ingredients
Wet Mixture
- 3 Large Lemons
- ¾ C Sugar
- 8 Tbl Unsalted Butter – 1 Stick
- 2 Eggs
- ¼ C Milk
- ½ C Sour Cream
- 1 Tsp Fiori di Sicilia – King Arthur Flour
Dry Mixture
- 2 C Flour
- ½ Tsp Salt
- 2 Tsp Baking Powder
- ¼ Tsp Baking Soda
- 2 Tbl Poppyseeds
OPTIONAL Lemon Drizzle
- 1 C Confectioners Sugar
- 1½ Tbl Lemon Juice
- 1 Tbl Milk
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 425℉. I know that seems high – but we turn down the temp after the first 5 minutes…so carry on!
- Melt a stick of butter and let it cool. You can whisk up the melted butter and try to incorporate air / cool temperatures into the butter to get it to cool faster. You can also put the melted butter into the fridge to try to ensure it is cooled down.
- Zest 3 lemons into the Sugar in a large bowl. Stir and let it sit.
- Squeeze lemons to get ¼ C of juice. Use the balance of lemon juice in your drinking water or with your dinner or …. ? Zested lemons will last a couple of days if tightly wrapped and refrigerated.
- Mix lemon juice into Sugar mixture.
- S-L-O-W-L-Y add the milk to the butter – while whisking. If you are anything like me – your butter wasn't very cool and your milk is cold… adding milk slowly to the butter will help prevent the butter from clumping back up.
- Add eggs, sour cream, FdS (or vanilla extract) and cooled butter/milk into the Sugar mixture and stir / whisk.
- Combine the dry mixture in another bowl and whisk.
- Combine the dry into the wet mixture and stir gently with a spatula until just combined and there isn't any dry flour.
- Line muffin tin with paper liners. Or not. See Note below!
- Load Muffin Tin with batter. You can use an ice cream scoop or other tool (large spoon?) to load up the mix into 12 muffin tins.
- Bake at 425℉ for 5 minutes and then turn down to 350℉ and bake another 14 – 16 minutes. (Mine were perfect after 14 minutes). Watch for browning and use a toothpick inserted to confirm done-ness.
- Let the muffins cool in their tin for 5 minutes, then move to a cooling rack.
- If you are a sugar-a-holic – you could make a lemon drizzle (stir to combine) and add to the top of your muffins. The calories below DO NOT include the additional drizzle.