Sunday, November 4, 2007

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins


I don't have a lot of time to do food blog related things (updating my own, making food to post about, and reading other people's blogs) as school is becoming even more time consuming! But I'm really trying to take some time here and there to update and read blogs. Actually if I'm not in a great mood, reading food blogs always immediately makes me feel better. So thank you everybody for your wonderful blogs - I'm just sorry I don't have more time to read them all and not miss entries.


Anyway, this is just a short post about the first thing I baked from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours (the infamous cookbook that every food blogger seems to really love so of course I had to go buy it). I bought poppy seeds a while ago but never got around to doing anything with them so when I came across her recipe for lemon poppyseed muffins I knew that was what I should make. And these muffins did not disappoint.


For a while I was going through a healthy muffin baking phase, but of course I will always love the non-healthy more cake like muffins (which I was previously under the delusion that they were good for me since you know, how can a muffin be bad for you?) Dorie's muffins were so delicious. The base has sour cream in it, which makes for such a nice dense cake (I mean muffin), my favourite kind. I will be using this recipe again and again, trying out variations (speaking of which, I love how in Dorie's cookbook she often suggests variations on every recipe.) The first variation I want to try (which definitely cannot be mistaken for a healthy muffin unfortunately) is white chocolate earl grey.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
Adapted from Baking From My Home To Yours (Dorie Greenspan)

2/3 cup sugar
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 400F. Prepare 12 molds in a muffin pan with butter or liners.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of lemon strong. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, thoroughly whisk the sour cream, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and melted butter together. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. A few lumps are okay, don't overmix. Stir in the poppy seeds. Divide the batter evenly among the muffins cups.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

what lovely muffins! and don't worry about commenting and stuff: it's great to focus on school! and I agree with you, no matter if I'm in a bad mood, there's nothing wonderful food blogs like yours can't fix.

Katie Zeller said...

They look lovely - of course they're good for you! They're muffins! And they're lemon...lemon is always good!

Deborah said...

I'm a sucker for a good lemon poppy seed muffin!! And I'm in the group that loves Dorie's book!

Cookie baker Lynn said...

These look wonderful. And how could anything from Dorie be bad?

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

As a college student, I definitely can sympathize with you, about being super busy and having a lot of work (and less time to blog!) - I hope things begin to "quiet down" for you, so that you can enjoy some free-time!!

mmm, the lemon-poppy-seed muffins look terrific - I've been wanting to try a recipe from my copy of "The Chicago Diner cookbook," for that type of muffin - thanks for the reminder! :0)

Patricia Scarpin said...

These are just what I wanted for breakfast this morning!
My sister is gonna love this recipe, gonna show her the photos and she will go crazy!

eatme_delicious said...

celine: Thanks Celine. :)

katiez: Haha good reasoning.

deborah: I am now happily in that group too!

cookie baker lynn: Very true indeed.

veggiegirl: Thanks. :) Hope your muffins turn out well for you!

patricia: Haha I'm sure she will love them. :)

JEP said...

Lemon-poppy seed, absolutely a favorite of mine!

Debs - debslosingit.com said...

I made these tonight sans the lemon, and since I forgot to put in the sugar too... I now have a batch of still not too bad, but bland muffins. They are pretty good with butter though, even sugarless.

eatme_delicious said...

Trouble: Glad they turned out okay, even though you forgot the sugar like me!

Celeste said...

I just finished making these muffins and they are great! I actually used the juice of 2 lemons instead of 1 because I'm quite a lemon-lover and I love the way they turned out.

Anonymous said...

My mom runs the Ardmore Inn in Vermont. She serves muffins or scones every morning with breakfast, so she is always on the lookout for good recipes. We gave this one a try last week, adding a lemon icing glaze, and the guests loved them. Thanks so much! We just wanted to pass on the praise. We look forward to trying more of your recipes.

eatme_delicious said...

Anonymous: I'm so glad you like them! They're one of my favourites.

ro said...

i made those... well, kind of. As i didn't get sour cream here in uruguay, i used a kind of yoghurt that is creamy and acid. and i forgot the poppy seeds! :)
but it wirked just fine.
maybe the sour cream gives them another sort of texture, but they have that lemon touch and sort of a different taste
thank u.
i'm starting my blog, a blog about nothing and everything and took the liberty of putting your blog among the ones i follow.

rosana, from uruguay

Amanda said...

I just finished making these muffins and found that they needed a glaze. Added some fresh lemon juice to confectioners sugar and drizzled it on top of all the muffins. Delish!! Thanks for the recipe ;)

Ashe said...

Hmm... I made it as a quickbread instead of muffins, and it turned out a bit denser and drier than I was hoping. Microwaving a slice for about twenty seconds improved it immensely, though.

eatme_delicious said...

Ashe: Hm I don't remember these muffins being too dense or dry. Happy to hear microwaving it helped though. :)

Anonymous said...

The Temp Is way to hot! It needs to be turned down to at least 350 degrees! And there tooo dry!