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I’ve been experimenting lately with lemon ginger muffins, looking for just the right recipe.
Unfortunately, with all the heat we’ve been having around here lately, my experiments took a hiatus for a couple of weeks. Who wants to turn on the oven when the AC is struggling to keep the house below 80°F?
In California we’ve finally had a break in the hot weather (my apologies to those of you on the East Coast who are getting it now) and I got up early this morning to bake these muffins.
So good! The yogurt in the batter helps create an especially light and fluffy muffin.
Lemon Ginger Muffins Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup 1/2-inch cubes of peeled, fresh ginger
- 1 large lemon
- 1 cup sugar -divided into 1/4 cup and 3/4 cup
- 10 Tbsp unsalted butter (1 1/4 stick), softened
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cup plain yogurt
Glaze
- 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 cup confectioner's sugar (powdered sugar)
Method
1 Preheat oven: Adjust the oven rack to the middle-lower part of the oven. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2 Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.
3 Make paste with lemon zest, ginger, sugar: Using a vegetable peeler, peel off the lemon zest from one large lemon (avoid the white pith). Coarsely chop the zest. You should have approximately 1/4 cup of chopped lemon zest.
Add this zest, the cubed fresh ginger, and 1/4 cup of sugar to a food processor. Pulse until a paste forms.
4 Beat butter with sugar, add eggs, then zest ginger paste: In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and remaining 3/4 cup of sugar together, beating until fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating until incorporated after each one.
Beat in the lemon zest and ginger paste.
5 Alternate adding dry ingredients with yogurt: Beat in one half of the dry ingredients until just incorporated. Beat in one third of the yogurt. Beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients. Beat in a second third of the yogurt.
Beat in the remaining dry ingredients and then the remaining yogurt. Again be careful to beat until just incorporated. Do not over beat.
6 Fill muffin tin with dough: Use a standard 12-muffin muffin pan. Coat each muffin cup lightly with olive oil or a little melted butter using a pastry brush. Distribute the muffin dough equally among the cups.
7 Bake: Bake at 375°F until muffins are golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Test with a long toothpick (we use a thin bamboo skewer) to make sure the center of the muffins are done. Set on wire rack to cool.
8 Make glaze: While the muffins are cooling, in a bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar and lemon juice for the glaze. Add more lemon juice if necessary.
9 Brush muffins with glaze: While the muffins are still a bit warm, use a pastry brush to brush the glaze over each muffin. The muffins will absorb some of the glaze, so you add more glaze to each muffin if you like.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
Lemon Ginger Muffins
I loved the crumb of the cupcake… but did not get ginger.. used the correct amount & very little lemon flavor (whole lemon zest & 1/2 c fresh ginger) made paste, but dont know why flavor was not there!
Hi Barb,
Was your ginger root older? Sometimes I have a root in the fridge for a long time, and though it’s still technically fine to cook with, its pungency fades.
These were phenomenal. Sorry I gave you 1 star before trying them. I love ginger and I love lemon (and lime) but I will say that has nothing to do with it, ok maybe a little :). Im in heaven. The crumb was delicate and perfect the tastes enough punch but not over powering, nice balance of flavor. The glaze with every bite, yummm. So I used one of those little scrapie zesters. I did a whole large lemon but I gotta tell you, I didn’t get a 1/4 cup I got more like 2 tbsp maybe you should just say, zest one lemon. And also In the instructions you say half of the dry ingredients a third of yogurt then the second half of the dry ingredients and second third of yogurt. THEN the REST of the DRY INGREDIENTS with the last third of yogurt? What did I miss? After the second half of dry ingredients there aren’t any left. Anyway, despite my confusion I just used common sense and I made sure not to half this recipe because something told me this one was going to be phenomenal. My husband Ran and got seconds. Also, I had no yogurt but I had homemade kefir and I was so happy I could use it on this. I wonder if that contributed to the awesomeness of my batch of this recipe. Thanks you. It’s a keeper for sure.
xxxxxyyyyy
Hi Ana, I’m glad you liked the muffins! I can see where the wording is a little confusing. It’s “beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients” which would be a quarter of all of the dry ingredients, since you already put in half of the dry ingredients. Glad you had homemade kefir to use in place of yogurt. I bet it was great!
I get it now. The second half gets divided. It wasn’t just great, it was phenomenal. This recipe should have 1000 – 5 stars! The bites into it the ginger felt like coconut. It’s just an explosion of flavors and tender textures, delicate crusty top etc. What else do you have that’s a favorite at your house? I’ll make it tomorrow. there goes the diet.
Hey how much lemon zest? 1/4 CUP?
Hi Anna, Just use a vegetable peeler to peel the zest from one large lemon, then roughly chop it. When I do this I have about 1/4 cup (which because of the rough chop, includes a lot of air).
Did not like these at all. Thought the flavor was flat, and the glaze had that raw powdered sugar flavor. They were fluffy and had a nice shape — so nice to look at — but they were too soft, and the crumb was too tender. Tossing the rest in the bin.
xxxxxyyyyy
These were absolutely amazing. Super moist. Packed full of flavor. Muffin tops were very large (bakery-style). FYI – The muffin tins will be very full when you put in the batter. I used half yogurt and half buttermilk because I ran out of yogurt.
xxxxxyyyyy