Category Archives: Muffins

Crunchy Lemon Muffins

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Some days, you need a bright and cheery morning or afternoon tea to help get you through the day. And things don’t come much brighter or cheerier than lemon muffins. Aren’t they sweet?

Muffins have rather fallen out of fashion, landing in the ‘dated’ pile with a definite bump. I don’t make them very often anymore, but they’re a nice blast from the past when I do.

Like almost every other New Zealand household, we have an ageing copy of Alison Holst’s Marvellous Muffins. I understand the Crunchy Lemon Muffins is one of the most popular recipes from that book, so I present it here, in a slightly healthier form. Disclaimer – I didn’t actually adapt it myself; the Holsts also put out a ‘healthy and delicious’ version of a muffin book, which has lots of modified recipes which cut down on the butter and sugar.  I did still hesitate before adding a ‘healthy’ tag to this recipe; they’re probably not food for every day, but if you’re going to munch muffins, they might as well be these ones!

If you’re finding work a bit hard to get back into, I recommend whipping up a bunch of these (if you can’t be bothered faffing around with the crunchy topping, just leave it out completely), freezing, and popping one in your lunchbox every morning, so it’s thawed and ready to cheer you up at morning tea time.

Crunchy Lemon Muffins by Alison Holst

2¼ cups self-raising flour, sifted
¾ cup sugar
1 large lemon, finely grated rind and juice
½ cup rice bran or canola oil
1 cup trim milk
1 large egg
½ tsp salt

¼ cup lemon juice (you might need to top up the juice from the lemon above)
¼ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 210°(C), and have a rack for the muffins just below the middle of the oven. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin pan (I use a quick spritz of rice bran oil cooking spray).

Place the self-raising flour and sugar into a medium-sized bowl and mix with a fork.

In another, larger bowl, place the lemon rind, oil, milk, egg and salt, and beat with a fork until well combined.

Tip the dry ingredients onto the liquid mixture all at once, and fold everything together until the flour is just mixed in. This step is the trick to good muffins. You want the ingredients just mixed together until there are no more huge pockets of flour. The mixture should not be smooth or too well combined.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan evenly. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the muffins spring back (I usually check with a skewer, too).  While they’re cooking, get your measured sugar and lemon juice at the ready.

Once baked, leave the muffins in their tin for about 5 minutes – until you can just get them out of the tin without them breaking up. Lift them out carefully onto a cooling rack.

Working quickly, mix together the lemon juice and sugar, and brush this mixture on top of all the hot muffins, making sure they all get a bit of undissolved sugar on top. Once you’ve done the tops, keep brushing on the sides and bottoms of the muffins, until you run out of mixture. Leave them on the rack until they’re cold and crunchy.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Muffins

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I go a little crazy buying strawberries at this time of year. But they’re so good! And good for you! And they give everything such a summery taste. This is very important, especially on wet spring days like today in Wellington. It has been miserable – it literally rained on my (well, ok, the All Blacks’) parade.

So, if you need cheering up, you should definitely try these cute muffins. For me, the berries + cream cheese combination will never get old. On a toasted bagel is the classic, but these muffins are really tasty – sweet but still fresh and summery. Perfectamundo.

By the way, keep an eye out for a couple of other posts in this vein over the next few days – a strawberry mascarpone slice, and some little rugelach – cream cheese pastry wrapped around a jammy berry filling.

Back to the strawberry cream cheese muffins. I was making some mac & cheese to take to a new mum, when someone mentioned to me that they had taken muffins to another new mum lately, and the genius dawned on me. Muffins don’t require heating, unwrapping, plates or cutlery. They are the perfect food for new mums. I was vindicated by said new mum munching through one within 5 minutes of them arriving.

This is a recipe from Alison Holst’s Marvellous Muffins, a bit of a bookshelf staple for kiwi muffinistas; I hope she won’t mind me sharing this recipe with you.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Muffins
from Alison Holst’s Marvellous Muffins (available here)

2 cups self-raising flour
¾ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
½ cup cream cheese
1 cup milk
1 egg
1 tsp finely grated orange rind
1 cup (125g) frozen or fresh strawberries, chopped (if you’re using frozen, don’t thaw them)

Preheat the oven to 200°(C). Spray a 12-hole muffin tin with cooking spray.

Measure the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Mix with a whisk.

Measure the cream cheese into another bowl, and beat until smooth (you could warm the cream cheese a little if needed). Add the milk, egg and orange rind and combine with a whisk or beater.

Combine the wet ingredients, dry ingredients and chopped strawberries, stirring as little as possible. Overmixing is the main danger to avoid when making muffins; I mix just until there aren’t any big pockets of flour left.

Divide the mixture between the muffin holes and bake for about 12 minutes (might need a couple of minutes longer if you’re using frozen berries), until lightly golden and a skewer comes out clean.