Chunky Apple-Lemon Muffins

I am still on a muffin craze, loving my new silicon muffin cups. Luckily for our stomachs, I spend more time looking at muffin recipes than actually making them. He, I think, is only into my muffin craze because it means there are more muffins laying around to eat. About a week ago I decided to break out my muffin cups again and this time use up the apples we had lying about.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 pinch salt
2 eggs
10 Tbs butter (I used 1/2 c applesauce instead, it makes me feel less guilty :) )
1 Tbs lemon zest
2 tsp lemon juice
1 cup milk
2 medium apples
1 Tbs sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Directions: 
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). 
2. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together the 1/2 cup sugar, eggs, butter (or applesauce!), lemon zest, lemon juice, and milk. Mix the creamed ingredients into the flour mixture.

3. Peel and cut your apple into reasonably sized chunks. We liked the big apple pieces in our muffins; however, if you make them too big there is not enough muffin to keep it together and you end up with muffin pieces. Fold the apples into your batter. 
 

4. Spoon into the prepared muffin cups.






5. Mix the 1 tablespoon sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle over the tops of the muffin batter. 

6. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. 

This recipe makes about 16 muffins.

These muffins are more cake-like than muffin-like meaning they are DENSE! That does not mean the flavor is not good, it is, it just means you need to expect to feel like you are biting into a cupcake with a muffin flavor.

If I make these again, I think I will use the topping from the banana muffins instead of cinnamon and sugar. To learn how to make that topping check out the amazing banana crunch muffin recipe here.