The BEST Lemon Blueberry Muffins

The recipe I'm about to share with you is in the front running for one of the very best muffin recipes I've ever tried. I was looking for a way to use up some vanilla flavoured greek yogurt that was drawing close to it's best before date. I wanted to use as much of the yogurt as possible and I needed to restock on breakfast foods so I figured a batch of muffins would be the best way to remedy the situation.

After searching through a few recipes I found online, I settled for this Joy of Baking recipe. The only addition I ended up making was 1 tsp of lemon rind, and I used vanilla yogurt in place of plain. I had originally wanted to use the smaller wild blueberry in this recipe but as it turns out the cultivated frozen blueberries were on sale at the grocery store, so I decided to go with that. They turned out wonderfully! They are super moist (even more so the day (or two) after baking!), and the bursts of blueberry are paired well with a hint of lemony goodness.

Don't let the thickness of the batter worry you. This turns out much thicker than other muffin batters I have made in the past. It doesn't pour, so you have to make muffin balls and place them inside the muffin cups (or greased muffin pan). Please do yourself a favour and try these muffins at least once!

The BEST Lemon Blueberry Muffins (Adapted from Joy of Baking)

Ingredients

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 cup vanilla flavoured greek yogurt

1/3 cup vegetable (or other non-flavoured) oil

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon rind

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (I used frozen)

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. If you are using paper muffin cups, place these inside the muffin tin. If not, lightly butter or use cooking spray on the muffin tin.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the egg, yogurt, oil, vanilla, and lemon rind. Set aside.

In a large sized bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add in the blueberries and stir gently (if you are using frozen blueberries, place in the batter while they are still frozen, otherwise you will end up with blue batter!). Fold the wet ingredients in the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Remember that the batter will be super thick!

Make the muffin dough into balls using an ice cream scoop, two spoons (or even your hands). The muffin ball should fill the wrapper/tin. I was able to make one muffin tin (12 muffins) with this amount of batter.

Place the muffins in the oven and bake for 15 - 25 minutes or until a toothpick placed in the centre comes out clean (mine ended up taking closer to 25, but my oven is quite old and I suspect the temperature is off).

Enjoy!

- Alex (Bean)