Lemon muffins with lemon curd

I have recently made lemon curd. Whole jar of this yellow, creamy, sweet and sour mixture. We could have eaten that, I believe it wouldn't last long, but I wanted to bake some muffins with the curd. While looking for some inspiration on line I came across this recipe. It was perfect. Light cake, rich, sweet and sour lemon curd and very sweet icing. Yummmyyy... And because it close to Easter I baked the muffins is Easter style liners and make the icing and curd look like and fried egg :)

Ingredients for 12 muffins:

• 350g flour
• 105g sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon zest (I didn't have lemon so used lemon extract instead)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 60 ml oil (used canola oil)
• 250 ml milk
• 2 egg whites
• 1 tbsp lemon extract (if not using lemon zest)

 Preheat the oven to 180C. Line muffin tin with paper cases.

Put the flour, sugar, lemon zest, baking powder, salt into a bowl and whisk them together.

In a jug mix the oil and milk, add the lemon extract if not using lemon zest.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

Pour the wet ingredients into a bowl with dry ones. Mix until just combined. Then gently fold in the egg whites. Spoon the batter into paper cases, about 3/4 full. Bake in preheated oven for 20 - 25 minutes until skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. 

Transfer to the wire rack to cool down. 

Prepare the icing.

Ingredients for icing:

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 2 tbsp double cream
• some milk

 Put the sugar into a small bowl add the cream and mix with spoon until turn into thick white paste. If it's too thick add few drops of milk and stir again.

Take the cooled muffin, cut the hole in the top. If you have use the muffin corer if not try with knife. Try to make clean, round shape. 

Fill the hole with lemon curd.

Talking about lemon curd. You can use one form a shop or make you own one. 

I prefer home made. It is not difficult to make one, you can store it in fridge for about a week. Here is a recipe I usually use.

Ingredients for 250 - 300ml of lemon curd:

• 160ml sugar
• 125 ml fresh lemon juice
• 2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 egg
• 125 ml unsalted butter

 Whisk the sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, egg yolks and egg together in a metal or glass heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water and gently whisk the mixture form time to time. Within 15 minutes the mixture should thickened . Remove the curd from the heat and strain into a bowl. Stir in the butter until it melts completely. Pour the mixture into a jar and chill it. The curd will set in the jar. You can use it later in many ways, spread on toast, as crepe filling ... or just eat straight from the jar :) The recipe comes form Anna Olson 'Back to baking' cookbook. 

Coming back to muffins. When they filled with lemon curd then take a spoon and spread the icing around the yellow circle to make it look like the egg. Or if you not happy with it just drizzle the icing over a top. 

 Enjoy !

Recipe in Polish