A lot of my hubby’s family are in to ‘board’ games – yahtzee, monopoly, tri-ominoes, rummy-o etc. An afternoon can often be happily whiled away playing various games. Last Saturday was our turn for putting on an afternoon – five of us for an afternoon of triominos and monopoly. Visitors bring extra food along which is never organized ahead of time but always seems to turn out just right. We decided to see if the food we provided for the visitors could come from our cupboards – no extra shopping allowed – chicken wings, turkish bread, pizza, anzac biscuits. I baked the anzac biscuits about 45 minutes before the guests arrived so the house had a lovely baking aroma, mother-in-law loved the biscuits so much she has gone off to try the recipe. Our food was created for easily less than $20 (including the non-alcoholic drinks) – not bad for an afternoon of visitors. As an extra plus we ended up with left over food offerings from the visitors including lemons which can now be used (amongst other things) to make more lemon curd (see my recipe section) and Alison Holst’s Crunchy Lemon Muffins Radio New Zealand Content by Genre : Recipes : Afternoons : Crunchy Lemon Muffins
Crunchy Lemon Muffins.
For 12 regular muffins or 24 mini-muffins:
Turn the oven to 200 F with a rack in the middle of the oven
Ingredients
Mix together in a bowl, big enough to hold all the ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour
3/4 cup sugar
Measure the next four ingredients into a small bowl, then mix them together.
75g butter, melted (or 50g butter + 2 Tbsp canola oil, or 5 Tbsp oil)
1 cup milk
1 egg, preferably size 7
grated rind of 2 lemons or 1 lemon and 1 other citrus fruit.
Method
Tip the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and fold them together, preferably with a flat bladed stirrer. Mix just until the flour is dampened but NOT until the mixture is smooth. Using two spoons, put spoons of mixture into 12 regular muffin pans or 24 mini-muffin pans coated with non-stick spray or rubbed with soft butter.
Bake for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned. While muffins cook, put about 1/4 cup lemon juice (or lemon and other juice) in a small bowl. Have 1/4 cup of sugar ready to add to the juice after the muffins come out of the oven.
If the muffins do not come out of the tins easily while they are very hot, leave them to stand for a minute of two, then twist gently and lift them out. Dip the top half of each muffin into the juice and sugar mixture, and turn it slightly before lifting it onto a rack. If there is still some juice left, re-dip the muffins or brush the mixture onto the muffins.