Bring a touch of summer to your breakfast with Lemons

Everyone loves the scent of freshly cut lemons. Great on salads, zested over pasta, or squeezed over vegetables prior to serving, lemons are a versatile culinary ingredient. With the cold weather still upon us, I woke up Sunday morning wanting to make something that would brighten up my breakfast table. I decided I would use the lemons in my fridge and whip up some muffins and small lemon loaves I could freeze and use at a later time. The recipe is very versatile as you can make the dough ahead of time and then you can bake it up the next morning

Lemon Crumble Muffins

TOTAL TIME: Prep: 20 min. Bake time: 20 min for muffins, 40 min for mini loaves

Ingredients

• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 cups sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 8 eggs
• 2 cups (16 ounces) Sour Cream
• 2 cups butter, melted
• 3 tablespoons grated lemon zest
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Crumble Topping

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cold butter, cubed

Glaze

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup lemon juice

**This recipe is large and yields 24 muffins plus 4 mini loaves!

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, combine the eggs, sour cream, butter, lemon zest and juice. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. In a separate small bowl, combine flour and sugar for crumb topping; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full with batter, then sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.

Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes for muffins in the Nordic Ware Naturals muffin pan & 40-45 minutes for the Nordic Ware Mini Loaves or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks. In a small bowl, whisk glaze ingredients together; drizzle over warm muffins so that the glaze soaks into the interior of the cake. Serve warm.

Everyone in the house loved them and the even baking qualities of the Nordic Ware muffin pans and mini loaf pans really helped with creating wonderful zesty muffins. And as an added bonus, I have four Lemon loaves I can heat up this week and serve to our friends over coffee!