Lemon Blueberry Muffins

Here's the google docs link, in case you want to skip all my ramblings and just get the recipe. Which if you decide to make it, you'll want that link to be able to print it, too.

I'm not good at photographing food, but I discovered you have to have a picture for Pinterest to work, so here's a picture of one of the muffins I just made.

This was originally a Lemon Raspberry Muffin recipe. I discovered, after buying a box of fresh red raspberries, that I don't much like them. They're too sour. My solution to dilemmas like this one is to find something to bake it into. I went hunting, and found this recipe. 

I made it, more or less as directed, and discovered I still don't really like raspberries. My mother was the one who sparked further interest in the muffins, as she commented that the raspberries didn't really suit them but blueberries might.

And I'd been intermittently hunting a good blueberry muffin recipe that wasn't 200 calories a muffin. 

Thus I started messing with this recipe. What I came up with gives a nice, moist, tender, chewy muffin with a golden brown color and tastes good both straight from the oven, re-warmed in the microwave, or even room temperature (although I like the two warm versions best).

I went through several iterations with this one, and I'm dreadfully sorry but I came up with a recipe that has three different types of flour and three different types of leavening agent! But I will say the cream of tartar does make the final "yum" of the muffins.

Here's the recipe, with comments from yours truly. You'll find a list of needed equipment at the bottom. All links go to Amazon Smile; I don't get money, your charity does. 

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

Prep time: 15 minutes (maybe--I didn't time it); Wait time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 18 minutes; Makes 18 muffins

Ingredients

1 small lemon

⅓ C. turbinado sugar (larger kernels, also called raw sugar. Walmart sells it, so it's not like it's hard to find)

1 C cashew milk, unsweetened (if you use almond milk it won't curdle. This milk gets turned into a non-dairy "buttermilk" and the point is the curdling part.)

⅓ C. applesauce, unsweetened

1 large egg white (you can buy this in a box that looks like a milk carton, only smaller. I hate separating eggs and wasting yolks, so I get the 100% egg white carton and use that. It has the equivalent on the side, but I believe it's 3 tablespoons)

1 tsp vanilla extract (try to get the real stuff, not the imitation version)

1 C white whole-wheat flour (I suppose you can use straight-up whole wheat but I've never done it. White whole wheat is a different type of wheat and it's more suitable for baked goods, like muffins. It's also screamingly expensive and only comes in "organic" from King Arthur (which is good, because I like that brand) but because you can't buy it non-organic you're stuck with the price inflation)

½ C all purpose flour (I get King Arthur all-purpose)

½ C oat flour (60 g) (Get rolled oats, not quick, and use a flour mill or a food processor to grind them up. Keep the leftover oat flour in the fridge--it has more oils in it and will go rancid if left at room temperature for weeks. The weight is because 1/2 C of oat flour does not equal 1/2 C of all-purpose and you actually need more oat flour if you go strictly by the 1/2 C measure.)

1 tsp baking powder (low sodium*) (You don't have to get low-sodium. But it'll change the nutrition information)

1 tsp baking soda (Make sure all the lumps are squashed out. Biting into a lump of baking soda in your finished muffin is not fun. Baking soda tastes quite bitter. Trust me on this one.)

1 tsp cream of tartar (This is the third leavening agent. It's what makes a snickerdoodle cookie a snickerdoodle and not a sugar cookie.)

¼ tsp potassium chloride (salt substitute)* (Again, you can use NaCl (table salt) but it'll change the nutrition information.)

1.5 C fresh blueberries (about 214 g before you wash them)

Directions

Remove the zest from the lemon with the vegetable peeler. Cut into smaller pieces and put aside till later.

Squeeze the juice from the lemon into the 1 C. cashew milk. Wait for 15-20 minutes for it to curdle.

Set the oven to 400℉ to preheat.

Grind the lemon zest and the sugar together in the coffee grinder. This will make the sugar sticky. Put the sticky sugar in a small mixing bowl. (If using a food processor you can keep adding ingredients to the same bowl.) (And by the way, I don't have a food processor, so I don't know how well this will work, either, but the original recipe has you doing it this way.)

Add the curdled cashew milk, the applesauce, the egg white, and the vanilla extract. Mix. (A spoon will work). (Do try not to get too enthusiastic though, or you'll have it all over the counter. Gentle mixing. It's a very liquid combination.)

In the large mixing bowl mix the three flours, the three leavening agents, and the potassium chloride. Mix well. (A spoon will work but not the one that’s wet.) Rinse the blueberries. Add them to the flour mixture and toss gently until covered in the flour mixture. (This helps reduce the blueberries' tendency to sink to the bottom of the muffin batter in the pan. Most all muffin recipes will have you add the blueberries at the end. Try it this way some time and see what you think, even if you don't actually make this recipe.)

Give the wet ingredients one last mix and add them to the large mixing bowl. Mix everything together just until the dry is all wet. (And if there's a tiny bit still dry, don't worry about it. You don't want to over-mix it. This is going to be a very liquid looking muffin batter, by the way. It's supposed to be.)

Prepare the muffin pan(s). (Liners, spray oil, whatever you’ve chosen). Fill each muffin hole about ⅔ to ¾ full using a large spoon or a large melon baller. (The links all go to smile.amazon.com. I don't get money from it. Your chosen charity will.)

Bake at 400℉ for 18 minutes. Check with toothpick to see if done at the end of the baking time (it should come out clean, like a cake).

Allow muffins to cool in the pan at least 5 minutes before removing them.

Equipment

18 “holes” worth of muffin pan(s) (I have to go with a 12 muffin hole pan and a 6. Maybe there's an 18 holes in one pan version out there, but I don't have it.)

Vegetable peeler or cheese grater (I can't use a cheese grater without blood, tears, and recriminations, so I'm the vegetable peeler person. You'll want to cut the lemon zest into smaller pieces than the peeler gives you, just to make the coffee grinder's life easier and take less (noisy) time.)

Lemon juice squeezer (I got mine at walmart, an impulse purchase while I was shopping for other things that I haven't regretted. It does take a lot of arm strength and the liquid runs down both the outside and through the drain holes. Also, I don't think anything but a small lemon or lime would work well ... but hey, I'm not squeezing the lemons by hand anymore, and that's a bonus. But you can do it by hand if you don't want to buy anything extra.)

Coffee grinder or food processor (This coffee grinder is great. We use it at work to grind up the product into a fine powder so I can test it (I'm a chemist). It goes inthe dishwasher repeated just fine. I highly recommend it, as I've seen first hand the beating it can take.)

Small mixing bowl

Large mixing bowl

1 C. liquid measure container (or 2 C if you’re not weighing the blueberries)

⅓ C. dry measure container

½ C. dry measure container

1 C. dry measure container

1 teaspoon measure

Spray oil, butter, coconut oil, or liners: something to keep the muffins from sticking to the pan

Large spoon or large melon baller (see link above)

Spatula (probably a half-size one so you can use it to get the wet sugar out of the coffee grinder cup as well as clean the bowl during muffin depositing time)

Nutrition Information (using myfitnesspal app; 1 serving equals 1 muffin)

Calories 74 (probably 75, if you've sprayed the pan or gotten a little generous with the flour)
Fat 0.6 g
Sodium 96.3 mg
Potassium 106.8 mg
Carbs 15.4 g
  Fiber 1.6 g
  Sugars 5.3 g
Protein 2.3 g