Healthy Blueberry & Lemon Muffins 🍋

If you follow us on instagram (@SEZPK), I recently bought a muffin tin as I want to start baking more cupcakes, muffins, PEANUT BUTTER CUPS (YES THEY ARE COMING SOON), egg tarts, and other delicious things. I couldn't decide whether to make a muffin or a cupcake, but thought I'd do a healthy muffin for now because health is wealth. I might make some easter cupcakes soon too so stay updated! I have divided the recipe into a few phases as after some reading, people always say that the secret to a perfect muffin is making sure that you don't mix the wet with the dry ingredients for too long, so pls bare with the extra hassle, because it is worth it!

We both love blueberry muffins but we also wanted to add some fresh lemon zest in the mix (if you want an original blueberry muffin, skipping the lemon zest is deffo allowed). One thing we also love when we are having muffins is the crispy crumble crumb on top that sometimes cafes/bakeries bless us with. So after doing extensive research on the web, we are so happy to present to you...a refined-sugar-free (as it is sweetened with honey and coconut sugar for the crumble), healthy and delicious, blueberry & lemon muffin with a crumbly cinnamon and oatmeal topping 🤤

Serves: 12 muffins

Difficulty: Level 2

Wow factor: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Phase 1: The Muffins (Ingredients)

Dry Ingredients:

• 224gr of self-raising flower (if you don't have self-raising flower simply use 224gr of plain flour + 1tsp baking powder, 1/2tsp baking soda, and 1/2 tsp of fine sea salt)

• 1/4tsp ground cinnamon

• (Optional) dash of nutmeg

Wet Ingredients:

• 75gr of sunflower oil (you can also use melted coconut oil or extra virgin light olive oil)

• 170gr honey (if you want your muffins a bit sweeter, you can add 50gr of coconut sugar too on top of the honey)

• 2 eggs

• 245gr of plain greek yoghurt (low-fat is allowed too, but the muffins will not rise as much)

• 2tsp vanilla extract

• 1/2tsp lemon zest

Phase 1: The Muffins (Instructions)

1. Pre-heat oven to 204 degrees celsius, and grease your muffin tins if they need greasing. Make sure that the tray you will place your muffin tins on, is right in the middle of the oven.

2. Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl, using a whisk to mix. We will call this Mix A.

3. Now combine the wet ingredients together in a separate medium-sized bowl. First mixing the oil and honey.

4. Add in the eggs and beat well using a whisk.

5. When that is done, add in the greek yoghurt, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Mix well again until it is all well combined. We will call this Mix B.

6. Now if you want to make the crumble topping, I suggest pausing here and reading the instructions on Phase 2 before we go on to adding the blueberries in. If you don't want the crumbly-blessings on your muffin, then go ahead and skip to Phase 3.

Phase 2: The Cinnamon, Oatmeal Crumble Topping (Ingredients and Instructions)

• 8gr cold slightly salted butter, cut to small dice pieces (you can also use salted/unsalted if you want, depending on how you like your crumble, I suggest slightly salted/unsalted so it doesn't take the spotlight from the muffins too much)

• 3tbs plain flour

• 2tbs coconut sugar/other refined-sugar alternatives you want/brown sugar if you don't care

• 2tbs rolled oats

1. Mix all the ingredients together using your hands. If you have never made crumble before, it is literally about combining the butter and the other ingredients really well using your fingers in a rubbing motion so that lumps start to form.

2. You'll know when to stop when it starts looking like sand with a few lumps here and there. If the lumps are too big, you can add it more flour and more oatmeal.

3. Set aside for topping the muffins later.

Phase 3: The Final Destination (Ingredients and Instructions)

For the blueberries:

• 150gr of frozen or fresh blueberries (if fresh, skip the plain flour below)

• 1tsp plain flour

1. Back to the dry and wet ingredients, take Mix B (wet) and pour it into Mix A (dry). Just use a big spoon to do this because we don't want to overmix. Now you have created Mix C.

2. In a separate bowl, take your frozen blueberries and sprinkle the plain flour all over it. Toss it around so that each blueberry is covered in flour. This stops the blueberries from sinking to the bottom of the muffin. We want them perky and all over the muffin, not drowning at the bottom!

3. Tip the blueberries into Mix C, and gently fold the mixture together.

4. Divide the batter equally between the 12 muffin cups. Do not forget to level them too!

5. Take your Phase 2 Crumble topping, and sprinkle 1 teaspoon of the crumble over each muffin cup.

6. These babies are ready for baking! They will need around 17-19 minutes depending on your oven, but I didn't want to burn the topping so after 17 minutes, and once the muffins have properly formed into bouncy little things, I decreased the heat to 170 degrees celsius and gave it another 5 minutes to bake.

7. After 18 minutes in the oven, you can insert a toothpick to check if the muffins are ready or not. If it is, the toothpick should come out clean. If it is still a bit wet, leave it for another 3 minutes. Do not be fooled if the wet toothpick is caused by the exploding blueberries inside the muffin. Find a spot where it is just the dough so you can check on the readiness of the actual muffin. Lol I hope this makes sense!

8. Once done, take it out and leave it to cool on a cooling rack. If you have greased your tins properly/your non-stick pan is not lying to you, the muffins should come out really easily when you use a spatula to edge the muffin out of the cups.

9. Eat as a snack, dessert, breakfast, it is quite filling and tastes like HEALTH. In a good way ofc 🤗

Yes my recipe draft is in the background.

Tip: You can make this recipe dairy-free too if you skip out on the crumb topping and skip the greek yoghurt (replacing it with vegan buttermilk which is just 2/3 cup of nut milk with 2 teaspoons of vinegar, letting it rest for 10 minutes before using it).

For some reason, the next day it does taste a bit more sweet, so if you first try it and it is not that sweet, wait for the next day. If this is still not sweet enough for you, when making it again next time you can add the 50gr (100gr if you have a proper sweet tooth) of coconut sugar in I mentioned above as an optional step. Enjoy! 👩🏻‍🍳 #SezPK #Muffins #RefinedSugarFree #BlueberryMuffins #Baking #HEALTH #LemonandBlueberries