My brother is visiting me this week and he is a big fan of the pictures I send him of my baked stuff. He has only tasted one banana bread which turned out perfectly. So he thinks I am a great baker. Poor guy, he is in for a small shock. I am a decent baker but not perfect by any stretch.
So I have to keep something ready for him to eat as soon as he arrives. I researched quite a bit and finalized on this lemon poppy seeds muffin. But then I realized two things – I had way too much orange zest and I did not have any eggs. Hence I made some changes to that recipe and it turned out really good. The muffins were soft and flavorsome and totally melt in your mouth!
Ingredients
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tbsp poppy seeds
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup (56 gms) unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup (100 gms) sugar
3/4 cup curds / yogurt
1 tbsp orange zest
1 tbsp orange juice
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
Directions
1. Preheat the oven at 205 C
2. Grease a muffin tray
3. Mix all the dry ingredients (6 of them)
4. Beat butter and sugar till they are light and fluffy.
5. Add curds, orange zest, orange juice and vanilla essence to the butter mix and combine well
6. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix well. Don’t overmix
7. Use a spoon or ice cream scoop to put the batter in the muffin tray
8. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the toothpick comes clean
9. Cool for 5-10 minutes before unmoulding
Notes
1. You can use a different combination of the two flours or any one of them. The original recipe calls for all purpose flour only.
2. If you want to use egg, you will need one large egg. In that case reduce the yogurt/ curds to 1/2 cup and omit the baking powder
3. When a recipe says ‘don’t overmix’ it means that the wet and dry ingredients should be combined only till all the dry ingredients are incorporated in the wet mixture. Once that is done, you should stop mixing it with either a spatula or whisk or even a spoon. It makes the batter denser and thereby affects the texture of the cake or muffin.
4. I used Tropicana 100% orange juice. You can use fresh juice as well.
