Lemon Blueberry Muffins

If I had a  Bed and Breakfast, I would make these muffins every morning and put them in a basket for my guests.  Every.  Morning.

There is no lemon in the batter, just in the glaze and the sugar they were sprinkled with on top.  You have to like lemon to like these because it is a real intense lemon flavor at first, but then it's just a good old moist blueberry muffin burst in your mouth.
I guess you don't have to put the glaze and sugar coating on top, but....why wouldn't you want to?  Oh...you don't like lemons?  Well, then... just go on now and make something else, because these are great!   The lemon burst in your mouth is wonderful.

I found the recipe in  America's Test Kitchen "Best Baking Recipes" magazine and gave it a try this morning after our walk, while The Handyman fixed the cover on the patio, so it wouldn't leak.
Then we sat on the patio and enjoyed a couple of muffins and a cup of coffee.

If you look closely you can see the lemon glaze dripping down the side of the muffin and also the little flakes of lemon zest in the lemon sugar.

This recipe said it made a dozen but for me, it made 18 regular sized muffins. 
I had to give some to the neighbors, so we wouldn't eat them all.

Big Beautiful Muffins
from America's Test Kitchen magazine

3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups plain whole-milk or low-fat yogurt
2 large eggs
1 stick melted and cooled butter
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries with 1 T flour.

1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Grease  12-cup muffin tin.

Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, soda and salt together in a large bowl. Whisk the yogurt and the eggs together until smooth. Gently fold the yogurt mixture into the flour mixture with a rubber spatula until just combined, then fold in the melted butter, then the blueberries.

Using a  prepared 1/3 cup measure, divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups.  Bake until golden brown and a toothpick comes inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbs attached, 25-30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking.

Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes before glazing and serving.

Stir together  1/2 cup sugar and 1 tsp finely grated lemon zest i a small bowl.
Simmer 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup sugar in a small saucepan over med heat until syrupy--about 3 minutes.
Once the muffins have cooled, brush the tops with the lemon syrup and then dip them into the lemon sugar.

While I was taking pictures of my muffins, The Handyman was doing this:

putting flashing on the roof of our patio cover.   We like to sit out there when it rains....which it rarely does in Nevada,  BUT when it does, it downpours.  It's a cloudburst that makes flash floods in the desert and makes rivers of our downhill roads.  And it also floods our patio.
We had a cloudburst on Thursday.  It was amazing---thunder, lightning and a downpour like I can't even explain.

But they only last for about 15 minutes or 2o at the most...and then the clouds move on and we have blue sky again---as you can tell by this pic.  
Angry cloud moving on and blue skies in it's place.

I am doing this weird thing.  I am taking  picture of my yard every Saturday.  I'm going to do it for a year---just to see how it changes.
I used to have a 'backyard'  blog,  but I never did enough stuff  (gardening, etc) to really post, so I stopped.  Now I am posting  "a year in my backyard" there.
You can check it out every so often, when I mention it here.  Just click on the link.     (it's kind of boring really---nothing changes in 4 weeks )
But now I'm off to lay in the hammock and read a book out in the big backyard!  Not too many more Saturday afternoons of doing that.