Lemon Muffins

lemon olive oil muffin

My aunt made a really yummy granola-like muffins for me while I was staying at her house.  The recipe came from a Cooking Light article on various baked goods.  I flipped through the magazine while there and found this recipe for Lemon-Scented Olive Oil Muffins and I thought of this yummy olive oil I recently feel in love with from TJs (about 6 or 7 dollars a bottle, dark glass bottle, used to indicate olive origin).

Frankly I didn't notice the olive oil in the muffin, but they were nice and moist (2 tablespoons of oil, 1/2 cup of sour cream they should be) without the glaze, even yummier with the glaze.  And they weren't overly sweet like some lemon baked goods.  All in all I do recommend seeing if your local public library has the January/February 2006 issue of Cooking Light to take a look (unless of course your public library has a habit of chucking magazines more than 12 months old).

Muffins

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream*
1 1/2 tablespoons grated lemon rind (it is about 1-2 lemons worth)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons milk*
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 large egg
1 large egg white
muffin tin paper liners*

Preheat the oven to 350F, prep 9 muffins tins with liners.  Mix the dry ingredients (flour through salt) in a medium sized bowl.  Whisk together the wet ingredients (sour cream though egg white) in a small bowl.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stir until just moistened.  Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup (or a #24 scoop, which is 3 tablespoons according to its package) fill the muffin tins (the recipe claimed it would make 10 muffins, using the scoop I barley made 9).  Bake for 25 minutes (the muffins should barely be golden and will spring back when touched).  Let them cool then top with 1 teaspoon of glaze per muffin.

Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Whisk everything together in a small bowl until smooth.  These quantities are what the original recipe called for but I'd recommend cutting the recipe in half or thirds (but I'd leave the lemon zest as is because can you have too much lemon zest) since I had a lot of glaze leftover.

*notes:  the original recipe called for fat-free dairy products, I used what I had on hand.  It also called for cooking spray but I used paper liners.  And speaking of paper liners, I picked up some unbleached paper muffin tin liners and my muffins don't actually stick to them as they did the pastel colored liners I used to buy.

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