So today I made lemon muffins.

Actually, I made lemon cake, but since the batter was much more muffin-y than cake-y, I’m calling them muffins.

I kept trying to think of something different to do for decorations. I’m not always in the mood for butter on my muffins, and since these dont actually have any real fruit in them, or any seeds, or anything of any nutritional value, I cant see putting butter on them. Also, they’re not overly sweet or puffy like cake, so a big heap of frosting just wouldnt do.

I tasted the batter and decided it wasnt sweet enough. Not wanting to add any more sugar and mess up the proportions, I thought about just sprinkling some sugar on the top. No. that wont work either. I dont want plain lemon crunchy top muffins.

Maybe these were just destined to be boring. Boring boring muffins.

I actually left the batter in the bowl for a while and went through some old family cookbooks, trying to see if there was anything I could make that I neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comcould just add this batter to.

Then it hit me.

I was flipping through the pages and I saw my mom’s recipe for zucchini bread with gumdrops in it.

I just happened to have some dots candies (like gumdrops without the sugar on outside) So I got out a bowl of sugar and started slicing with a sharp knife.

I started remembering being a child and watching TV and having my mom thrust a giant mixing bowl filled with sugar onto my lap. I guess most kids would be excited at the offering, but not me. Both me and my sister knew that this could mean only one thing.

Time to slice the gumdrops.

I dont know if anyone other than my family has made such a practice a seasonal affair, but its fairly commonplace in our family. Every year, sometimes twice a year, my mom would make zucchini bread in HUGE batches. HUGE! The bowl she would use to mix the batter was almost two feet in diameter. I am not kidding. This bowl was huge, and for the most part it was only brought out to make two recipes- Banana oatmeal cookies and zucchini bread.

Now, in order to make a batch of anything big enough to warrent using “the bowl” it required plenty of ingredients. If one of those ingredients so happens to be sliced gumdrops, then you better get your little kitchen elves to work.

That was where me and my sister came into play.

The act of slicing gumdrops sounds much easier than it really is. Especially when you consider that gumdrops arent particularly soft. They’re actually kind of hard, BUT GOOEY! That was the hard part. You’d have to stop after only a few candies because your knife would be all gummed up. Also, if you have to slice the large sized gumdrops, you’re screwed. Those things are twice as gummy as the regular sized ones.

Now imagine having to slice gumdrops with a butterknife. Yep, thats right. A butter knife. Originally thats what I had to use to slice the gumdrops, because I was too young to be trusted with a sharper knife. I know from more recent experience that it is STILL difficult to slice gumdrops with a sharp knife, but.. a butter knife? thats like a slow painful death.

I know that I attempted to boycott the zucchini bread in hopes that she wouldnt make it again, and that I wouldnt have to cut up any more gumdrops. It didnt work.

And it wasnt that it didnt work because she made me do it anyway, it didnt work because I gave in and ate like an entire loaf of the zucchini bread. That stuff is SO GOOD. I’m totally going to have to make it and write about it and post pictures, because its seriously the best stuff ever.

She would make huge batches of this stuff, bake them in miniature loaf pans and then wrap them up and freeze them. These were the Christmas gift of choice for the longest time. People would ask for more. When anyone sliced into the bread and saw the shiny little jewel like gumdrop slices inside the bread, they were amazed. It was like finding the buried treasure.

Anyways, So I finished slicing up my dots. I spooned the batter into the muffin tins and put the sliced dots on the TOP of the muffins. See, That way its like a decoration AND an ingredient. It makes my job so much easier.

This was the final result-

The recipe I used would have made entirely too many muffins (I make muffins like, every weekday, I dont need to make a thousand at a time) So I fixed the proportions and only made about a quarter batch, which only made like, 12 mini muffins, which I am totally alright with.

I think I might have to start adapting the gumdrops to more recipes. They’re so pretty!
Amazingly enough, these are some of the least sweet muffins I’ve made in a long time. I used a simple yellow cake recipe using lemon extract instead of vanilla extract. I would have added lemon juice but I hadnt thought about that when I last went to the store, so I would have to just be happy with the lemon extract.

I got this recipe off of Epicurious.com

3 cups cake flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
5 large eggs
2 tsp Lemon extract
1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 350.

Sift the dry ingredients together in one bowl, set off to the side. Mix the liquid ingredients together in another bowl.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, whip the butter until its smooth. Then add the sugar slowly until it fluffs up a bit. Add the liquid and dry ingredients, alternating between them.
The batter was pretty thick, actually. I call them muffins because they’re more muffin-y than they are cake-y.

After you’ve got all the ingredients mixed together and whipped up and as fluffy as you can get it (you might have to add some milk if its still too thick) set the batter off to the side.

You’ll need greased muffin tins or papered muffin tins. I liked how these looked without the cups. I’m actually thinking I’ll keep making muffins without papers because I’m really not a big fan of how the traditional muffin papers look at the bottom of my muffins. Cupcakes- sure, but I like the bottoms of my muffins showing.

Anyways.. For the jewel tops I thinly sliced a couple dots candies (you can use gumdrops) and dipped them in sugar. then I cut the slices into three separate pieces. Dipping them in granulated sugar keeps them from sticking to each other and also helps add a little sweet crunch to the muffin tops.

After you’ve got your dots or gumdrops sliced and chopped, spoon the muffin batter into your greased or papered muffin tins by the spoonful.

Once the muffin batter is in the tins, take a pinch of your sliced, chopped and sugared candy and put it on top of the batter. Bake muffins at 350 until the tops of the muffins are lightly golden. Let them cool a little before taking them out of the tins.

For my cupless muffins I like to dip the bottoms in a little granulated sugar. It helps keep them from sticking to whatever plate I set them on and it helps with the lack of sweetness.

-A.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 11:54 pm and is filed under January 2007, The Cupcakes!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.