I used to bake a version of this recipe as muffins all the time when Michael was alive. They’re an easy recipe, and there’s no need to wait for butter to soften, which means you can whip up a batch at a moment’s notice. Lemon is my kiddos favorite but orange is also really nice, so feel free to swap in orange zest. I’d still stick with the lemon juice, though, because I notice orange flavors always pop more when there’s some lemon to brighten it.
Lemon poppy muffins hold special memories in our family. Once upon a time in my former life with Mikey, we’d sit on the bench at Mazzola Bakery, near our old Brooklyn apartment, and snack on mini lemon poppy muffins. They were a solid tie for first place with the chocolate muffins in the tastebuds of our then little kids.
This cake reminds me a lot of those muffins, and perhaps that’s why Virginia also asked me to bake them as muffins recently. I’ve included baking instructions for making the recipe as mini loaf cakes and regular sized muffins. If you want to try mini muffins, the directions stay the same, as does the oven temperature. You’ll just need to tweak the baking time. I suggest you start checking them for doneness at around 15 minutes.
I’ve made some changes to that original recipe from back in 2009 swapping out some of the milk, and adding ricotta cheese and Greek yogurt. The ricotta is because I had some extra to use up in the fridge. The tiny bit of Greek yogurt is in here as a trick for dividing a recipe that originally called for three whole eggs. Since dividing three eggs means you’d have a half beaten egg killing time in the fridge, I decided to just use one whole egg and sub in Greek yogurt to make up for the remaining half an egg.
Swapping in plain Greek yogurt for eggs is something I do often in baked recipes. The general rule here is ¼ cup yogurt for each egg. This works well for recipes where egg isn’t the main star, and only when using the entire egg in the batter. I do not use this substitution trick in recipes that call for separating the eggs and beating the whites.
You might’ve noticed most of my recipes these days are smaller scale. My cooking has changed with the size of my family at home. Where possible, I try to scale them up and give different baking instructions. This was tested using mini loaf pans I found at Home Goods. Each pan holds about 1 ½ cups of batter.
To see if your loaf pans are the same size, fill them to the top with water, then measure the water out into a liquid measuring cup. If your pans hold more batter, then you’ll probably need to bake them longer. If you want to bake this as one full-sized loaf cake, I suggest doubling the recipe for an 8 or 9-inch loaf pan, and guessing that it will take anywhere from 65 to 75 minutes to bake.
Hope your week has been filled with some moments of peace. Be well, and remember to be kind. —xo, j.