I'm always looking for a work distraction, and baking has provided me with some great procrastination recently. I shared a photo of these lemon and poppy seed muffins on my Instagram page and they had a surprisingly keen response!

Simple is how I like my baking, and I'm not particularly precise or delicate when it comes to finishing touches and I'm certainly not going to be turning into a baking/cooking blogger! But I really enjoyed making (eating) these.


The muffins don't use any butter and the oats make them filling enough to be a breakfast muffin for busy mornings or when you're on the go. The yogurt and oil keeps the muffins nice and moist and light! So maybe there's a touch of sugar, but hey, I only said 'semi-healthy'.

Perhaps you'd like to try them for yourselves...

Ingredients:

225g cups plain flour
75g porridge oats
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp baking powder
110g caster sugar
2 tsp poppy seeds
2 lemons - zest & juice
95ml sunflower oil
2 eggs
150ml low fat natural yogurt
115ml semi skimmed milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
icing sugar

Method:

• Turn the oven to 190C/fan170C/gas mark 5.
• Grease a 12 hole muffin tin - or you can use muffin cases if you'd prefer
• Combine the flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, caster sugar, poppy seeds and lemon zest in a large bowl.
• In a separate bowl combine the oil, eggs, yogurt, milk, vanilla extract and lemon juice.
• Tip the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together until you have a nice tasty combined muffin mixture.
• Divide the mixture evenly between the 12 muffin holes.
• Bake for 30 minutes until risen slightly and golden brown on top. I like to poke a skewer into the muffin to check the batter isn't raw inside and that they are nice and cooked through.
• Remove and wait (not-so-patiently) until the muffins are totally cool before icing.

For the icing, I can never get the amounts perfect first time. But I put a couple of cups in a bowl, add a touch of water slowly and a squeeze of lemon juice. Then drizzled over the top of the cool muffins. I find a touch of icing on these muffins is just what they need, but it's of course optional. I then stored them in a plastic tub in the fridge, all of which were devoured within 5 days.



Thanks for reading, pinups!
xo