Bright and sunny, soft and fluffy lemon muffins! Topped with a sweet crumbly streusel topping and flavored with real lemons and no artificial flavoring, these muffins are cheery bundles of lemon glazed sunshine.
I told myself that once I quit my job I would try to cut back on the baking on the weekends.
That hasn’t exactly happened. Saturday I didn’t do any baking and I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I pulled weeds, I played with the dogs, but there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that insisted I needed to spend some more quality time with my KitchenAid.
That voice finally got the best of me yesterday, and I spent all Sunday baking and photographing and trying to convince Zach that he didn’t really need to follow around behind me cleaning up the kitchen because I’d totally get to it eventually.
I had some baking fails and managed to drop a giant spoonful of marshmallow fluff on the only piece of carpet in our whole house, but there were some more cheerful successes as well, mostly in the form of these lemon muffins.
I made these lemon muffins for the third time in less than a week, just to confirm that they really were as soft, fluffy, and citrusy as they appeared to be the first two times, and my suspicions were confirmed — they are totally “blog-worthy” and I’m excited to share them with you today!
I didn’t use any lemon extract in these muffins because I rarely keep any on hand and wanted to flavor them naturally using only real lemons. If you want a more intense flavor and do keep lemon extract on hand, you can add about a quarter teaspoon of extract to the mix, but I think it’s totally unnecessary.
The lemon zest and lemon juice (a full 1/4 cup!) go a long way flavor-wise and make for slightly sweet, slightly tart lemon muffins, but as perfect as the flavor is, my favorite part might actually be the crumbly streusel topping.
It’s just three ingredients — sugar, flour, and butter — cut into coarse crumbs with a pastry cutter and then sprinkled liberally over the tops of your muffins.
And I do mean liberally, I love my streusel topping <3
Just as with my bakery style chocolate chip muffins, when we bake these lemon muffins we’re going to start with the oven at a higher temperature and then reduce it part-way through the baking time (without opening the oven!). I talked more about why we do this back in my chocolate chip muffin recipe, but basically this helps our muffins get those fluffy sky high tops that we want, even if we’re loading them down with heavy crumbly streusel 😉
I like to top off these muffins with a simple 3-ingredient lemon glaze. While the muffins have a great lemon flavor in and of themselves thanks to the zest and a healthy pour of lemon juice, the lemon glaze it what really sets off the citrus flavor.
Enjoy!
Lemon Muffins
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (260g)
- ¾ cup sugar (150g)
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoons salt
- ⅓ cup canola oil (80ml)
- ⅔ cup buttermilk (160ml)
- ¼ cup lemon juice (fresh-squeezed is best)
- 1.5 Tablespoon lemon zest
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Crumb Topping
- 1/3 cup flour (65g)
- 1/3 cup sugar (100g)
- 3 Tablespoon salted butter cold (45g)
Lemon Glaze (optional)
- 1 1/4 cup powdered sugar (160g)
- 1 1/2 Tablespoon lemon juice (20ml)
- 1 1/2 teaspoon water
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425F (220C) and line muffin tin with paper liners. Set aside.
- In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. Set aside.
- In a separate, large bowl, whisk together canola oil, buttermilk, lemon juice, and lemon zest.
- Add eggs and whisk until well incorporated.
- Add dry ingredients into wet ingredients and use a spoon or spatula to gently stir ingredients together until mostly combined (a few dry lumps are OK, it is critical to the fluffiness of our muffins that you don't overmix).
- Portion batter into prepared muffin tin, filling each liner over 3/4 - way to the top with batter (do not overflow. I like to use a standard ice cream scoop with a lever to easily portion my batter).Set aside while you prepare your crumble topping.
Crumble Topping
- Whisk together flour and sugar.
- Use a pastry cutter to cut in butter until mixture is combined and like coarse crumbs.
- Sprinkle tops generously and evenly with crumble topping and place muffin tin in preheated oven.
- Bake on 425F (220C) for 8 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 350 (175C) (do not open the oven door or remove the muffins, just leave them in and reduce the temperature) and bake another 12 minutes.
- Remove muffins and allow to cool while you prepare lemon glaze.
Lemon Glaze (optional)
- While the muffins cool, prepare your glaze by whisking together powdered sugar, lemon juice, and water
- Drizzle glaze over the top of each cooled muffin. Allow to sit and harden about 10 minutes before serving.
Nutrition
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christy says
can I use the normal milk rather than buttermilk?
Kay says
It it alright if I use vegetable oil instead of canola?
Sam says
Absolutely, enjoy!
Kelly says
Hi Sam,
How long should I cook in the oven for if I was going to make them as a whole cake rather than cupcakes?
Thanks
Kelly
Sam says
Hi Kelly! I haven’t tried it, so I can be sure.
Tall Blonde says
Sam – have you ever tried adding fresh blueberries to this recipe? I get requests all the time for lemon – blueberry muffins. I’ve made this recipe as is & the muffins are terrific. I do add zest to the crumble & to the glaze fir added lemon flavor. Thanks in advance for your thoughts about the blueberries.
Sam says
I think adding blueberries would work just fine in this recipe. 🙂
Nancy Holt says
Your muffins rock!! Would love to see you come up with a coconut cream muffin.
Sam says
Thank you for the suggestion Nancy! I’ll add it to my list. 🙂
Cathy LaPoint says
Im confused, step 1 and 4 are the same? is it doubled?
Sam says
Whoops! Good catch, thanks Cathy!
Tracey says
Hi Sam I’m going to give theses a try cz I love making muffins and trying different flavours and the photos look yummy.
BA says
Made these for an Easter egg hunt. They were delicious but a little dry. Next time, I won’t cook them for the entire stated time. Thanks for the recipe!
Judy says
Sam, I made these last Sat. to take to church on Sun. Followed directions carefully and weighed all ingredients. They looked beautiful!
However 🙁 they were a bit dry, couldn’t taste the lemon, and the glaze caused the topping to crack and fall off. I used lemon juice that I froze in the spring from our Meyer lemon tree. Perhaps I should have added a bit of lemon flavoring? Omit the glaze? But how to make them more moist?
Sam says
Oh no, I’m very disappointed to hear this, Judy!! One thing I really loved about these muffins when I made them was how moist they were so I’m sorry they didn’t come out like that for you. Overmixing could definitely cause the muffins to be dry, is it possible that they were over-mixed? It’s OK to still be able to see a bit of flour in the batter when you portion it into the muffin cups. I assume you added the lemon zest, right? that’s what really gave them the flavor for me, you definitely can add lemon flavoring but this recipe was designed so you wouldn’t have to :-/
That’s really strange to me about the topping cracking and falling off, usually I feel like there’s no such thing as too much glaze, but is it possible that it was too much? Mine didn’t do this, so I’m really not sure…
I’m sorry they came out dry for you and that I don’t have a clear answer why it happened!
Sues says
Yummm I feel like these would be so perfect to wake up to. I have been loving lemon desserts lately!
Sam says
Thank you, Sues! Definitely the time of year for lemon everything!
Pat says
But Sam , this muffin doesn’t have marshmellow ???
I might have to CHEAT
And have a WHEAT TREAT
I love lemon and they look great.
Hugs, Pat
Sam says
Haha, you are right! The Marshmallow was for a S’mores recipe I was working on the same day 😂
Thank you for commenting, Pat! I hope you are doing well!! <3
Joanne says
Your photo’s are beautiful, and love the crumble and glaze on top of these muffins!