Lemon-y Sunshine Muffins

One of my favorite people, and one of the photographers of the cookbook absolutely LOVES lemon poppy seed muffins. These turn out very lemon-y and buttery in flavor. It's like baking up summer sunshine.

This particular recipe is being added to the updated version of the cookbook, so it doesn't yet have all of the typical instructions you will find on this website. If you need clearer instruction, please shoot me an email and let me know what doesn't make sense. I haven't put it through kid-testing yet as the borrowed kiddos are busy with school demands.


Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins

1/4 cup butter (really soft or melted in microwave; I melt mine)
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup milk  (do NOT use water, but skim milk will work)
1 egg (Jumbo or Extra Large AA)
3 packets TrueLemon OR 3 tblsp. lemon extract or lemon juice
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tblsp. baking powder
1-3 tblsp. poppy seeds (this depends on your preference, I tend to use 2 but for big fans I'll use 3)

You'll need 2 bowls. Mix the flour, poppy seeds salt, and baking powder in one bowl and put to the side (I use a whisk or fork for mixing the dry ingredients). In the other bowl mix the butter, sugar, and lemon hoice until well mixed. Add the egg until mixed in.  By hand stir in the remaining ingredients by alternating the milk and dry mixture. Be careful to not over mix.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a muffin tin or use paper cups.  Fill cups about 3/4 full and bake for 20-30 minutes. This will depend on your oven, for mini-muffins mine takes 22 minutes, for regular size muffins it takes 25 minutes, for jumbos 30.  This recipe will usually make 24 mini-muffins, 12 regular muffins, or 9 jumbo muffins (depending on your tin sizes).


Lemon glaze:

1/4 + 2 tblsp. powdered sugar  (no powdered sugar on hand, you can use regular)
1/4 c. water + 4 packets TrueLemon OR 1/4 lemon juice

Mix the sugar and lemon until well mixed. Drizzle over the top of the cooled muffins.

I tend to double this glaze when I make the mini muffins as I remove them from the pan and drizzle it over the whole batch at once, which takes more.

Tomato overload!

Last year I had an overload of grape and cherry tomatoes, this year not as much, but I do have an overload of Roma's, Celebrity, and "patio" tomatoes. Which means only 1 thing...SALSA TIME!

When I make salsa I use every tomato I have from my garden, including the cherry and grape tomatoes. This year I did two batches of salsa, and a batch of "soup starter". Soup starter is very similar to salsa, at least it starts out the same.

Soup starter includes every left over, stray, and odd ball veggie from my garden that I like thrown in with the tomatoes, bell pepper, onions, cilantro, and oregano. I also add in one can of tomato paste to thicken it up a bit. I use this soup starter with chicken in my crock pot in the cold wintery months. It sure makes things speed up quite a bit.

Even my neighbors had tomato overload, one dropped by with some beautiful read tomatoes and a bell pepper. I still owe him a jar of salsa, so I think there's another batch that's going to have to be done up this week.

What do you do with your excess tomatoes?