This past weekend I had an extra long weekend. I had off Friday through Monday and I had a lot of great intentions to work on the cookbook project, write and test out some recipes and take some photographs.

Isn’t it funny when you had such a nice long weekend, but you can’t remember everything that you did? I did a bunch of things – including finally going to see Rogue One on Saturday! Well worth the wait and I’m so glad SC and I managed to squeeze this in while the movie was still in the theaters. Definitely makes a difference. I thought the movie was great – if not very uplifting.

On Sunday we went into Boston and spent the afternoon at the MFA and walking around the city. It was unseasonably warm – in the mid sixties yesterday! A lot of snow melting, thus there were a lot of puddles to dodge, and it was a great day. We walked through Eataly twice (it was still too busy to stand in line for much of anything – but after dinner we did get two cannoli, I still haven’t tasted mine yet!)

Instead of braving the crowds at Eataly for dinner we opted for a French meal – and enjoyed a couple of hours at Brasserie Jo which I really love. I had the salmon and SC had the short rib bourguignon – both meals were super flavorful and well prepared.

Today, I finally sat down to think about and make the muffins I had in my head for a few days now – lemon chia muffins.

This morning I thought a lot about my cooking and baking process. I find that I am more organized when I cook than when I bake – photo evidence:

 

But still, I always clean up as I go and put away ingredients once I am finished with them… so I’m never left with a complete mess. It’s always fun to try and keep my notebook clean of messy ingredients!

 

When I am writing, testing and taking photographs of a new recipe I always double check my ingredient list after every step of my directions. There are a lot of things going on in my test kitchen and it can be easy to forget a step or an ingredient. To make this less likely, I always check everything at least twice.

These muffins came together really well. I liked to substitute half of the butter with applesauce and I loved using yogurt to give the muffins a different texture.

 

The one thing I would change next time is that I would grease my muffin tin with butter instead of using the muffin paper liners – the muffins got a little stuck at the bottom. Lesson learned!

I was really happy with the muffins – and SC really liked them, having two for a mid morning snack with his coffee.

 

Lemon Chia Muffins

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

4 tablespoons applesauce

½ cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup plain yogurt

2 tablespoons lemon zest

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 cup chia seeds 

Optional Glaze:

¼ cup confectioner’s sugar

2 teaspoons lemon zest

1 tablespoon lemon zest

½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a non-stick muffin tray with butter.

In a large bowl, using a mixer or wooden spoon, mix together butter, applesauce, sugar and vanilla. Incorporate eggs, lemon zest. Mix until all ingredients are blended well. Add two tablespoons of lemon juice.

In a separate small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix together. Once wet ingredients are combined, add half of the dry ingredients to the large bowl. Mix together with wooden spoon. Add half of the yogurt to the large bowl and incorporate. Repeat until dry ingredients and yogurt is incorporated to the large bowl. Mix in the chia seeds. Do you best not to overmix the batter.

Using an ice cream scoop or a spoon, evenly distribute the batter into your muffin tin, filling about two thirds full.

While muffins are baking, in a small bowl mix together confectioner’s sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla to create the glaze for muffins.

Bake 15 – 20 minutes (I test my muffins after 15 minutes and usually end up baking them for about 17 minutes). Test muffins with a toothpick – muffins are done once they are slightly browned and the toothpick comes out clean.

Remove muffins from tin and place on cooling rack. After the muffins have cooled for a few moments, drizzle the optional glaze onto the tops of the muffins.