Lemons, lemons, everywhere!

Last night, Mr. Spice came home from an event with a bag of (drumroll, please)…lemons! Not two days after I’d –unusually- bought three lemons at the store to make lemon poppy seed bread, pictured below, for a church bake sale. Overnight, my imagination turned the 4 lb. bag of lemons into a Santa Clause sized sack, and I woke up reciting like Forrest Gump: lemon meringue pie, lemon chicken, lemonade, lemon soufflé, lemon sorbet, lemon soup?, lemon cookies, lemon mousse?, etc.

I imagined myself to be on an episode of Chopped, receiving a basket filled with lemons, destined to create an appetizer, entrée, and dessert using them. Thank goodness no time limit for me- whew! 

I adapted a recipe for Lemon Blueberry Muffins from kitchen-concoctions, and brought some to my book group at Simmons Club of Boston. Here’s my version:

Combine  1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup white flour, ½ cup sugar, 3 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon cinnamon in a bowl. Zest and juice one lemon.

Beat ½ cup butter (1 stick, at room temperature) for 1-2 minutes, add 1 egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla, mixing well. Add 1 cup plus 1 teaspoon skim milk. Gradually blend in the flour mixture, adding lemon juice and zest. Stir in 1 and ½ cups frozen blueberries (not pictured).

The good thing about running out of regular muffin tin liners in the middle of baking, is that you can use the many mini muffin liners on hand to make 24 cuties and four regular muffins and one mini loaf (for your own sanity, you can stick to just one size item!).

Bake the mini muffins at 375 degrees for 16-20 minutes (I forgot to time how much longer the regular sized muffins needed). Melt ¼ cup butter, stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice. I used a bbq brush to apply the butter/lemon mixture to the tops of the muffins, and sprinkled them with sugar. If I hadn’t greased the muffin liners with spray oil, I could have dipped the muffins into the butter and sugar, but they were falling out of the liners, so the bbq brush worked fine. Next time I will use more sugar than the recipe called for, so beware that this version tastes fresh and fruity, not like typical bakery muffins (sweet).  

Stay tuned for lemon chicken, lemon cheesecake, lemon bars, etc. etc. etc.! Will this be the year of the lemon?