Lemon & Blueberry Muffins

I'm so excited to start blogging again! I haven't written since my son was born in 2012. Unlike my instagram profile (find me on instagram @whatemcooked), I'll be writing the cooking process in more detail in my blog, including the recipe I've used and sharing my story of the day. Now back to the lemon and blueberry muffins. 

This is the first of my lemon cooking & baking adventure coming up thanks to our fruitful lemon tree this year. We are very fortunate to have fruit trees (mandarins, lemons, peach, nectarines, plums, feijoas, kumquat, crab apples, cherry apples and strawberry guavas) in our backyard. I have a dream to start my own vegetable patch but I'll wait until my youngest son is older. Have a look at our lemons!:

The original recipe is from Donna Hay Modern Classics 2 Blueberry Muffins. I was feeling lazy to measure today so I cut the measurements to half to make 6 Muffins instead of 12, and I replaced the sour cream in the original recipe to greek yoghurt because greek yoghurt is what I have in the fridge, and frankly speaking sour cream and greek yoghurt taste similar to me. I love using muffin paper cups because there is no mess to clean after baking. 

You can use just lemon for this muffin recipe or add blueberries and other berries. Adding berries will add sourness to the muffins so make sure to use a little amount of berries.

Ingredients (estimate measurement):

• 1 cup of plain flour
• 1 tea spoon baking powder 
• 1/2 cup of caster sugar 
• 150 ml plain Greek yoghurt 
• 1/4 cup of olive oil 
• 1 egg
• 1 lemon 
• Optional: 1/4 cup of frozen blueberries 
• 6 capacity muffin tray 
• 6 muffin paper cups 

Method:

1. Heat oven to 160 degrees celsius fan forced.

2. Get two large bowls. In one mix sour cream, olive oil, egg, grated rind and juice of one small lemon well with a whisker. In the other bowl mix flour, baking powder and sugar. 

3. Pour wet mixture into the bowl of the flour mixture and mix well with a wooden spoon, stop when the batter is well mixed and thick, Donna Hay warned us to not over stir.

The mixed batter should look like this

4. If only using lemon: Put 6 muffin paper cups into the muffin tray cups - put about one wooden spoon scoop full of muffin mixture into the paper muffin cups. If you'd like to add blueberries: Add the blueberries to the muffin mixture and put about one wooden spoon scoopful into paper muffin cups

5. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. Check by piercing in the middle of the Muffins with a wooden skewer. If the skewer doesn't come out clean put the Muffins back in the oven for another 10 minutes. 

The Lemon Muffins Are Ready

My blueberry muffins needed longer baking time than lemon muffins, therefore I took the lemon muffins out first, and put the blueberry muffins in the oven for another 10 minutes. I should stop making muffins because there were only 2 left by the end of the day.  It is such a treat to have with tea in the afternoon.