The Baking Experiment: Muffins with Lemon Butterflies (or Muffins with Lemon Creme Filling)

Thank you for the lovely introduction Charlie! 

Those of you who know me or have visited my blog know that I am little bit addicted to TV. It is not a real addiction because I do not let it interfere with my social life or work. But I love TV series and always have something to watch. One of the suggestions I made in my blog to overcome my TV addiction and make a better use of the time spent watching TV is to multitask. I often do crafts or household chores like ironing while watching an episode. Especially when I am alone my laptop goes with me to the kitchen also. I know I shouldn't do this. The one or other accident while cooking or baking with my laptop near by have showed me why.

 However I like to combine two things that I love: TV series and baking or cooking. I think in the 50's I would have made a darn good housewife! I get bored doing the same recipe over and over again and therefore experiment a lot (with or without instructions) and try to do everything or as much as possible myself. Say no to preservatives and convenience food! It tastes much better and is healthier if you do it yourself.

A couple of weeks ago it was my boyfriends birthday. Here in Germany it is tradition to bring something to your coworkers when you start a new job or when you have something to celebrate like your birthday or your recent marriage. My boyfriend likes to cook, but when it comes to baked goods he keeps his distance from the kitchen. Hence, I do all the baking for him. The department he works in is big (ca. 50 people). So it gives me the opportunity to do more than one recipe and try out new stuff. For his birthday I baked triple chocolate cookies (his and my favorite) and lavender muffins. Both of them I did many times already and they are alway a big hit. The third recipe I did was a new one I tried out and this is the one I want to share with you: Muffins with lemon butterflies. (I did it without making the butterflies so it was more like muffins with lemon creme filling).

Here is what you need for 12 muffins:

• 125g plain flower
• 2 tsp. backing powder
• 125g margarine (you can also use butter)
• 125 g sugar
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• greater peel of 1/2 lemon
• 2 tbsp. milk

...and for the lemon creme filling:

• 85 g soft butter
• 175g powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C and line the muffin tins with cases.
2. Sift the flower and backing powder into a bowl. Add the margarine (or butter), sugar, eggs, lemon peel and milk to it and mix until smooth and even. 
3. Divide up the dough evenly into the muffin cases and take it to the oven for 15-20 minutes until they are golden yellow. Take them out and let them cool.
4. While they are in the oven you can prepare the creme filling. Whisk up the butter until its fluffy. Sift the powdered sugar into it, add the lemon juice and mix until it's creamy. Fill the creme into an icing bag. If, like me, you do not have one you can use a freezer bag and cut off a tip.
5. When the muffins have cooled down cut of the top with a knife (it works better if its a serrated blade) and then cut them in half. 
6. Spread the creme on the muffin bottoms and press two half tops into the creme so that they look like butterfly wings.

You should end up with something like this:

If you are going to transport the muffins in a box and you want to be able to stack them without ruining them you can keep the tops in one piece and simply put it back on the muffins after you spread the creme like I did. 

You might end up with some leftover cream. Since it was my boyfriends birthday I decorated the top of one of the muffins with more cream and put a candle on it.

This one we ate ourselves 

After spending half a day in the kitchen the result was 24 Muffins and approximately 50 cookies. On monday my boyfriend took everything (deducting a couple of cookie, one lavender and one lemon muffin we ate ourselves) to work. There was nothing left by lunchtime and a couple of colleagues asked for the recipes.