Banting Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

There’s something special about picking your own fruit, especially as this is our first harvest ever! We planted the lemon tree last year, and have patiently waited for the first fruits to ripen. So this week we picked the first one, before our little puppy would consider it another toy!

We used the lemon to make Banting-friendly Poppy Seed Muffins, using the Banting Blvd premix, which made it super easy. The recipe on the pack calls for 10ml Vanilla, and 10 ml Lemon Juice, but we were looking to really make our first lemon feature, so we reduced the Vanilla to 1 teaspoon (5ml), and added 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, plus the rind. The lemon flavour complements the coconut in the premix very well, and gives the muffins a zesty taste.

We used the OmniBlend 1.5ltr jug for mixing the wet ingredients, however the 2ltr jug would work fine too. If you’d want to make the dry ingredients from scratch, you could do so grinding the nuts and coconut in the 2ltr jug.

Ingredients (yield: 12 muffins):

Prepare a muffin pan, and preheat the oven at 180C. Add the milk, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice, and rind to the OmniBlend, and blend on low, for about 1 minute for a fluffy pale mixture. Add the Poppy Seed premix to a large bowl, and add the milk mixture. Fold in the milk mixture until well combined. Initially the batter will seem too runny, and as you’re folding in it will start to thicken. Divide the mixture over the 12 muffin cups. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a tester comes out dry.

The muffins will be quite small, and don’t be tempted to make fewer, larger muffins. It’ll defeat the purpose of portion size control. These muffins stay fresh for a few days, so you can bake them for breakfast, and store as an on the go snack to sustain you during the day.