Also while at the grocery store yesterday, I picked up a pack of whole blueberries. It had been too long since I made blueberry muffins.

This morning, early, I set out to make these muffins. I hunted through recipe books high and low. All of my recipes for blueberry muffins called for milk, and alas, I was out. It was early, and sure.. I could take a shower and go to the store and come back and make muffins with milk and everything would be fine, but the essence of fresh baked muffins for breakfast would have been lost when baking them in the afternoon. Its just not the same.

So I thought, I’ll look on the internet for a recipe for lemon yogurt cake. I LOVE lemon blueberry muffins, and I know I’ve seen plenty of lemon yogurt cake recipes out there.. I’d just switch a few ingredients around, and I could use up that tub of plain yogurt I have taking space in the back of my fridge.

After a considerable amount of searching, I finally found an acceptable one.

A few inneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comgredient switcharoo’s, some blueberries, twenty minutes in the oven and a simple lemon sugar glaze later.. I had me some tasty muffins.

I have to say I got my inspiration for today’s muffins from my nephew troy. He’s about 9 months old, and the most adorable little creature on the planet.

Since getting engaged, I’ve noticed that I have started getting all gooey eyed over babies. It’s strange. I like kids, they’re so much fun, but to be honest, until a little while after the wedding, I really wasn’t too fond of babies.
(Don’t hate me. I’m just being honest. I love babies now. Its like some sort of strange married lady thing, at least that is what I’m going to blame it on. hehe..)

But Troy was the cutest, even a few days after he was born.

Anyways, so last night all of my husband’s siblings and their significant others got together for Aaron’s brother’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant. Troy is my brother in law’s son. So he was there too.

This little boy was obsessed with this little wedge of lemon. It was the cutest thing. He’s like many kids his age, everything goes in his mouth. If it’s in his hand, its in his mouth… but it was a lemon, so it was sour.

So he’d put it in his mouth, and for a split second he would have this look of “ah, I’m so HAPPY its in my mouth” until the sour kicked in and he would have this look of utter HORROR AND DISGUST all at the same time. I do not thing that anyone can replicate this facial expression. It was wholly his own.. Then he took the wedge of lemon out of his mouth, and looked at it. He looked at it like, “what? Why are you doing this to me?” and then he’d hear all of us laughing and he’d look up and smile.

One time would have been enough, but no. This kid had a mission, and this mission was to have this lemon wedge IN his mouth, and he would stop and nothing to accomplish this.

He tried at least five more times. Finally his dad asked a waitress if they had any oranges they could get a wedge of, and they replaced the lemon wedge with the orange one. He started crying. He didn’t want the orange, he wanted the lemon.

So today, it was lemons and blueberries.
…and they were just as good as I had hoped.

Lemon blueberry yogurt muffins-

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
3 extra-large eggs
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

This was what I came up with-

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
a dash of salt
1 cup plain nonfat yogurt
1/4 cup coconut oil (it comes as a solid)
1 Tablespoon butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup fresh blueberries
lemon curd (optional)

Mixing is easy.

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking soda, and in a larger bowl, cream together the coconut oil and butter. Whisk in the sugar. Once the sugar is incorporated, add in the eggs, vanilla, lemon juice, lemon extract and whisk until fully incorporated. fold in the yogurt and vegetable oil.

Add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients, slowly mixing until no large lumps are left (you still want lumps though. Lumps are important for muffins!) Fold in the blueberries gently.

Pour into a papered muffin cups and top with a 1/4 teaspoon of lemon curd and bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. The tops will be shiny and browned.

When the muffins are done, remove them from the oven and let them sit about 5 minutes.

Poke a few small holes in the tops of the muffins with a toothpick and pour about a tablespoon of lemon glaze over the top.

you can make the lemon glaze by mixing together a cup of powdered sugar and 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice.

It only takes about a minute for the glaze to soak in. Sprinkle with a pinch of powdered sugar and serve warm! (or cold, they’re still really good!)

A little tip- If you don’t want your muffins to turn purple, roll your blueberries in flour and shake ‘em out so they have just a fine dusting of flour on them- BEFORE you add them to the mix. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

You can use canned berries, just make sure you add them at the very end, or you will DEFINATELY have purple muffins. Also, make sure to rinse and dry them before adding them. I guess if you get really desperate, you can use dried blueberries, but I have no real experience working with dried fruit in muffins, only cookies, so I have no idea what advice to give you.

Also, you can use all butter if you don’t have the coconut oil, I just LOVE the moisture that coconut oil adds to baked goods. PLUS there’s a little coconutty aftertaste.. mmm.

The cool thing about this recipe is that the lemon curd sort of falls to the bottom of the muffin, and the lemon glaze stays kind of at the top, so together, you’ve got a perfectly lemony muffin, with little globes of blueberry goodness inside! It’s great!

-A.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 8:22 pm and is filed under March 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.