Take Out Fake Out: Lemon Blueberry Crunch Muffins
Hey, y’all. I don’t know about you, but I am a major sucker for coffee shop treat cases. Especially at Starbucks, it just seems like everything looks amazing! It must be the lighting or something. Unfortunately, eating there every day costs more than my rent, and those treats definitely add up. I won’t even get into the amount of oil they have to put into their muffins to keep them moist for a long period of time.
Hint: It’s a lot.
I know the easiest thing in the morning is grabbing a muffin and coffee at your local coffee shop and hitting the road, but if you just set aside 30 minutes once every couple weeks, you can easily have a yummy homemade muffin every morning for breakfast. Muffins make a great light breakfast and they also make great snacks. They are portable and you can flavor them with almost anything under the sun and they would end up tasting great. The best thing is, let’s face it, most muffins are basically a cupcake posing as a muffin. A cupcake without its frosting. A cupcake in disguise.
I love cupcakes in disguise, ’cause you know what? Then I can pretend I’m eating something super healthy, when really, I’m eating a cupcake dunked in melted butter and crowned with sparkly sugar. I’m just in denial trying to be positive.
Lemon Blueberry Crunch Muffins:
Makes 12 Muffins
Total time: 35 minutes
Total time where you’re actually doing things: 15 minutes
- 2 cups cake flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Zest of one lemon
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1/3 cup oil (I used olive oil because I’m weird and not organized)
- 3/4 cup plus 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups blueberries
- 1/2 cup melted butter
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and prepare a muffin tin with 12 large/jumbo muffin liners.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and lemon zest and set aside.
In a separate bowl, mix together the milk and 1 tbsp lemon juice, set aside.
In one more bowl, whisk together the oil, 3/4 cup sugar, egg and vanilla extract. Add the milk/lemon mixture and then add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix until almost combined and then add the blueberries and finish stirring.
Divide batter between the 12 muffin cups and bake for 18-20 minutes. Remove to cool on a wire rack.
While muffins are cooling, mix together melted butter and remaining 1/2 cup of lemon juice in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, add the 1/2 cup of sugar. Dip the slightly cooled muffins first into the butter mixture and then into the sugar to coat the top of the muffin. Allow the dipped muffins to cool completely on wire racks.
