I remember my days working as chef/manager for food service cafeterias. People loved muffins for breakfast! We used dry muffin mixes or large tubs of various, premade muffin batters; scooped the batter into muffin tins and made dozens of mini, regular and large sizes daily. I love topping the muffins with garnishes like oats, chocolate chips, streusel, nuts etc... Morning Glory was my favorite, I bet I baked thousands of muffins in my five years at Gardner Merchant!

I think my 'go to' muffin is a delicious, corn muffin grilled with butter on a plancha-New Jersey diner style!

Muffins for Beginner's

I crave homemade, baked goods, especially in the afternoon with coffee. My wife is a pastry chef so I don't bake too often but I wanted to create a delicious, easy muffin recipe to share.

I spent weeks preparing muffin recipes to better understand how sour cream, creme fraiche, butter, yogurt, coconut milk, olive oil, etc... taste in muffins.

It turned out to be very challenging to develop a great, 'beginner's' muffin recipe.

The recipe I chose was given to me by my daughter Faith-a school teacher/ artist/ baker. It's a winner!

A good, basic muffin recipe calls for the dry ingredients and wet ingredients to be measured separately, then gently mixed together. It's very important not to overwork the batter so it doesn't get chewy. I found that baking the muffins at 400° F gave a good rise (a little dark color though).

Sugar seemed to be the best ingredient for flavor; AP and Cake flour both worked well.

I like using Baking Powder and Baking Soda but leaving out the Cream of Tartar.

Yogurt adds moisture and tenderness, it helps to cut back on the fat in the recipe. There is also the benefit of protein, that's important for some people.

Beginner's Muffins

Prep Time: 30 min

Yield: 12 ea

Ingredients

1 ea Lemon zest and juice

2/3 C Sugar

2 C AP Flour

2 tsp Baking Powder

1/4 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Salt

3/4 C Yogurt

2 ea Eggs, room temperature

1 tsp Vanilla

8 Tbsp Unsalted Butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

4 Tbsp Poppy Seeds (optional)

How to Prepare Muffins

Step 1 Mise en place

Preheat the oven to 400 °F;

Line the muffin pan with 12 paper muffin cups.

Gather the ingredients for the muffins.

This photo has ingredients for blackberry muffins.

Blend the sugar and lemon zest together with a fork until evenly mixed-it will smell amazing!

Step 2 Mixing the Batter

Mix/sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk the yogurt, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and butter together, until well mixed.

Slowly pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, whisking gently to combine; do not overmix!

Stir in garnish (poppy seeds).

Step 3: Baking the Muffins

Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin tins, filling each cup (leave about 1/2 inch from the top); gently tap the pan so that the batter gets under and around the berries. (gently!) Lower the oven to 350 °F. Place the muffin tin onto a sheet tray (to catch drippings) into the center of oven (middle rack).

Bake the muffins until lightly browned and firm to the touch-about 18 minutes, turn off the oven, leaving the door closed.

Let the muffins cool in the oven for 10 minutes.

In this photo, I experiemented with herbed, berry muffins:

3 with dill, 3 with basil and 3 with mint-it added a nice flavor. The top 4 have toasted nuts with blackberries.

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