Lemon Streusal Muffins

It's not hard to figure out if you have been reading my blog that I love to bake muffins and quickbreads. I have been on a bit of a banana bread kick for quite some time, but since My Youngest keeps eating all of the bananas before they can get nice and brown I have to come up with some other ideas.

I found a recipe for a "makeover" Lemon Streusal Muffin in the Taste of Home Healthy Cooking magazine. Lemon is a favorite flavor of mine because it makes me think of summer and sunshine. It's such a bright flavor and works really well in muffins. This recipe is a lightened version of bakery muffins and was simple enough to prepare. I do have a couple of issues with the recipe as it was written. It says to fill the muffin tins 2/3 full, but when I did that I still had batter left and ended up with about 16 muffins. After they baked up, I found that I could have filled the tins a bit more because they did not rise up as nice as I expected them to. The second complaint I have is in the streusal topping. It added a nice bit of sweetness, but looked nothing like the picture in the magazine (as you'll see in my picture). I think I would increase the butter just slightly for the streusal. I did leave out the walnuts, but don't think that would impact the muffins all that much. I may add some oatmeal to the streusal next time as well.

Overall, the muffins were dense and moist with a lot of lemon flavor. Definitely worth squeezing your own lemons for this recipe. It took me 2 full lemons to get the 1/2 cup of juice. Even though they are not tall and beautiful, I'll be grabbing a couple of these each morning for my breakfast. My Oldest and his friend enjoyed them almost as much as I did. Still can't get My Youngest to try muffins, but that's ok as that leaves more for me! ;)

From Family, Friends and Food

I'm going to be submitting this to the Lemon Day event over at 1x umrühren bitte. There is an abundance of lemons coming from their trees right now, so new recipes are being requested. The deadline is April 2nd, and the round-up will be posted on April 5th. Lots of time to join in if you want!

Makeover Lemon Streusal Muffins

Source: Taste of Home, Healthy Cooking

Ingredients

1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon lemon peel
1 cup cake flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup reduced fat lemon yogurt
4 egg whites
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon cold butter
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until crumbly. Beat in egg yolks and lemon peel. Combine the flours through baking soda; add to the butter mixture alternating between the lemon juice and yogurt.

In a small bowl, with clean beaters, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold into batter. Coat a muffin tin with cooking spray or use paper liners. Fill 2/3 full with batter.

For streusal, combine the 2 tablespoons of flour through nutmeg; cut in the butter until crumbly. Stir in walnuts. Sprinkle over muffins. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean (mine only took about 15 minutes). Cool for 5 minutes on wire rack, then remove from pan.