Lemon Blueberry Yogurt Muffins

I just love muffins.  The original recipe is a loaf and it is more difficult to portion and freeze.  We never got to the freezing stage of these though!  I tweaked the ingredients to make it lower in fat/less processed food and also fixed the directions to use the muffin method which is what the recipe was trying to do.

These were lemony, but not too tart and full of blueberry flavor.  They were a hit!  For even more lemon flavor you could try and use some lemon extract.  Since the lemon icing is not baked, I really recommend using fresh juice.  I have noticed it doesn’t make much difference in baked items, but the bottled stuff tastes a little off when doing icing.  But, you needed lemons to zest anyway (unless you used frozen zest like me).  The muffin tasted great without the additional lemon liquid in the original recipe and without the icing.  We made the icing anyway… you know just to taste test.

Lemon Blueberry Yogurt Muffins
yield 12 muffins

1 and 1/2 cups (7.5 ounces) + 1 Tb. AP flour, divided
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 cup plain yogurt (whole milk or low fat)
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp. grated lemon zest (about 2 lemons)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup applesauce (or oil)
1 and 1/2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen (if frozen, thaw and rinse until clear)

Icing:
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 Tb. fresh lemon juice

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 12- cup muffin pan with Baker’s joy, or shortening and flour.
2.  Mix the dry stuff in a medium bowl:  1 and 1/2 cups flour (7.5 oz), baking powder, salt.
3.  Mix the wet stuff in a great big bowl:  yogurt, sugar, eggs, zest, vanilla, and applesauce.
4.  Toss the blueberries in 1 Tb. of flour.
5.  Now the muffin method:  Add wet to dry and fold in the ingredients.  You should have a few streaks of flour left.  Overbeating will result in tougher muffins.
6.  Fold in the blueberries.  Since you are folding more, the streaks of flour should be almost gone.
7.   Scoop the batter with a large scoop into the pan.  Fill almost to the top.
8.  Bake 20-25 minutes.  Toothpick will come out clean with a little blueberry juice on it and a couple muffins will barely be browning on the edges.
9.  Cool muffins about 10 minutes and then put on a wire rack to continue to cool.
10.  To make the icing:  mix the powdered sugar with the lemon juice and spread on top of cooled muffins.  This was yummy, but they were great as is.

Recipe adapted from: Sweet Peas Kitchen

Linked to: http://www.ishouldbemoppingthefloor.com/2012/05/mop-it-up-mondays-18.html

http://www.skiptomylou.org/2012/05/28/made-by-you-monday-102/