My Favourite Muffins

In the days before Christmas we got a package we had ordered on AliExpress, containing 500 muffin liners. And that's how it all started :)))

I began experimenting with a simple vanilla muffin recipe, trying to perfect it to make exactly 12 puffy and delicious muffins. 

After several iterations, I found this to be the final (so far) perfect proportion of ingredients:

• 180 g flour
• 200 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100 g yogurt
• 80 g milk
• 40 g sunflower oil
•  pinch of salt
• 5 g baking powder + 2 g baking soda
  

To the above I might add vanilla, chocolate drops, cocoa, lemon zest, grated chocolate, raisins, nuts, etc.

Preparation: Mix and stir the wet ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir. Distribute in 12 muffin forms and bake in a preheated oven at 200C for approx. 20 min, until a toothpick test shows the muffins are done.

 I've made these entirely chocolate flavoured, adding 25 g cocoa to the mixture

I tried them with lemon zest, lemon flavour and lemon icing

I tried them marbled

and even with pears in a cake form. And they tasted perfect with coffee every time!

Lemon Cookies

Everybody loves cookies, especially around Christmas. 

Well, my family are big sweets lovers and consume cookies all year round, but anyway ... :)

I absolutely adore lemons - lemon color, lemon trees, lemon smell, lemonade, so about a couple of months ago I came up  with an idea for butter cookies with lemon. As Alex tries hard to cut on sugar, these cookies have less sugar than usual, but are still very delicious and fragrant. I've tried to replace the white sugar with stevia partially and completely - partially works, completely - not so much, as stevia has a different taste, which I happen not to appreciate. I also recently tried to replace sugar with honey - nah, nobody liked them, though we eat lots of honey otherwise.

This last batch is prepared with brown sugar and it was declared one of the best so far, so here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 average size lemon - zest and juice
• 1 egg
• 80 g brown sugar 
• 80 g butter
• 200 g flour
• 5 g baking powder and a pinch of baking soda
  

Preparation:

Grate the lemon and then squeeze it. Add the sugar and stir. Add the butter and the egg, stir. Fold in the flour with the baking powder and the soda. The resulting dough is very soft and sticky, but do not add additional flour, as the cookies will get too hard. 

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 20 min. This last batch came out just a little bit too soft, we prefer them slightly overbaked.

Serve with coffee, tea or why not a glass of white wine as a dessert after a light dinner.

Stay Home Card and Lemon Cupcakes

Gaby and her colleagues are missing each other  very much and came up with a cute idea - to cook together virtually. They even made an amusing video of the making of a lemon cake. And this is the card Gaby made for the initiative - the baking of the lemon cake.

My humble contribution to the card - I sewed the curtain :)

And here's the recipe for the lemon cake, which she baked into cupcakes:

• 120 g flour
• 150 g sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 eggs
• 100 g yogurt
• 3 tbsp sunflower oil
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp lemon juice

Glaze:

• 150 g powdered sugar
• 5 tbsp lemon juice

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 30 min. Let to cool, glaze and enjoy.

Very Lemony Lemon Layer Cake

Gaby's got the flu :(, and I've been cooking chicken soup and brewing herb tea with lemon all day and to cheer her up I also made a lemon layer cake (though she's still not feeling well enough to eat it).
I followed chiefly this recipe with a few modifications - I replaced the canola oil with sunflower oil, which we prefer, and I made the lemon curd with milk instead of water - so much richer and finer taste. Instead of fresh blueberries I put in blackberry jam. I meant to buy blueberry jam, but when I got home I found out that I had bought the blackberries instead. Never mind, not that much difference there :)))

My "lemon grove", grown from seeds

I prepared the cake, following the recipe, and I baked it in my 24 cm cake form. The cake is delicious but very dry. I soaked it with sugar syrup, and it is still a bit dry, so have that in mind, if you want to follow this recipe.

The lemon curd, prepared with milk, is divine - very smooth and lemony, the best part of this cake.
 

In the end, I like the recipe, but next time I would prepare at least half a cup of lemon sugar syrup and soak the layers with it before laying the curd.