Little Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Though I do already have one Lemon Poppyseed Muffin recipe up here, after some experimenting I found that I like this one SO much more that I just had to share it! It's an adapted version of the original, and the old post now has a link here to the new-and-improved version.



Little Lemon PoppySeed Muffins
Yield: about 30 mini muffins
Time: 15 minutes prep, 11-13 minutes cooking

3 tbsp oil (I used vegetable)
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp lemon zest

1 cup flour (I used half whole wheat and half all-purpose)
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp poppyseeds

1/2 cup milk*
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp lemon juice

*If you keep buttermilk substitute powder on hand, add 2 tbsp powder to the dry ingredients and use water in place of the milk. Either way works just dandy. I should also warn you that the batter will look alarmingly runny. Don't fret. I actually made a note to decrease the amount to 6 tbsp, but then the muffins came out so well I decided to leave it as is.

Note: Sorry about the weird measurements. If you doubled the recipe to make 60 mini muffins (12 standard sized) they would make a lot more sense, but I can never get through 12 muffins before they dry out, so I stick to the half-batch.

1. Preheat oven to 400 F
2. Combine the sugar, zest, and oil in a medium bowl, and use the back of a spoon to sort of "cream" them together the way you would cream butter and sugar. It should give the sugar a faint yellow tint from the zest
3. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix with a fork or whisk
4. In a small bowl or measuring cup (I like to use my 1-cup pyrex measuring cup, combine the milk, and lemon juice. Let it sit for a minute (it should look like it's curdling) before adding the egg and vanilla. If you're going the buttermilk powder route, you won't need to let it rest. Just combine all of the liquid ingredients together.
5. Alternate adding wet and dry ingredients to the medium bowl with the sugar/zest, then stir just until combined
6. Spoon into a mini muffin tin
7. Bake for 11-13 minutes and remove immediately to cool on a wire rack