Sunshine in a Peel: Lemon Muffins and long-term Saving Juice

More than 3 or 4 years ago, an old roommate of mine told me about a book called Ratio. This book shared the magic of being able to substitute any flours, oils and liquids as long as they were in the proper ratio to consistently make delicious baked goods. Before I could try this out with my baking, I learned from doing a month long food allergy detox that wheat made me break out with acne. If I were going wheat free, would the ratio would still work? You'd think after I'd had my share of coming out with gluten-free but rock hard bread and never setting muffins, I would really want to figure this out. But life happens and I never got around to getting my hands on the book or trying to test it otherwise. Lucky me, a Gluten Free Ratio Rally was done in 2011 and a community of food bloggers did the experimenting and reported on the successes.

Because my co-workers generously shared their lemon tree harvest this month, I chose to try out one recipe that didn't make waste of the any of the fruit used lemon peel AND 1/2 a cup of juice (and then I toss the rest of the lemon in the garbage disposal or to run with a load of dishes) and got a tip on how to store the rest of the fruits!

BAKED GOOD:
 Meyer Lemon Muffins from Eat The Love, tastes like sunshine and includes a dollop of jam. (while I didn't get to try making the author's strawberry basalmic jam, I had success with my September homemade freezer jam-followed the recipe for fruit on the pectin label as well as with store bought rapsberry jam.)

Notes on the results: My muffins don't have a fancy candied lemon. I was not sure they would stick without the frosting. The muffins don't have to have the frosting to taste good in my opinion but they are a nice flourish, especially since he did a charitable bake sale. Isn't his photography scrumptious? I thought the texture was cake-like (kind that makes crumbs when you bite it, maybe this is from using flax instead of eggs).  Someone else's blog that using cornflour makes a nice light bite but can have a chalky taste. I noticed that a little so I might try reducing the amount of cornflour next time, and pair with another starch like potato (makes denser, another blog tip) or tapioca.

Here is his recipe for the muffin with my ALCAT detox ingredient tweaks noted in blue. I made two versions. Any tweaks you make should also work as long as you keep the ratios of flour, starch (tapioca, corn, potato), liquids and fats! Easily adaptable recipes that avoid big shopping trips make my day.

100 g (1 cup + 1 tablespoon) oat flour [I made my own grinding Quaker oats in the magic bullet]
100 g (I forgot to measure non-metric equivalent) white rice flour and brown rice flour 50/50 blend
50 g (again forgot to measure non-metric) buckwheat flour or brown rice protein powder for extra nutrtition.
60 g (1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) cornstarch
zest of 2 meyer lemons, finely grated
170 g (3/4 cup) white granulated sugar or coconut palm sugar (lower glycemic index)
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
6 oz (170 g or 3/4 cup) of coconut milk (carton kind you drink like cow's milk) or hemp milk
2 oz (57 g or 1/4 cup) of meyer lemon juice
2 tbsp ground flax + 6 tbsp hot water (this is an egg replacer)
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
113 g (1 stick or 1/2 cup) of melted coconut oil or canola oil


1. Make your flax "eggs". Put flax in a mug, add hot water and cover with a plate for 10 minutes to allow it time to gel.

2. Preheat the oven to 350F.

3. Mix dry ingredients (includes lemon zest) together in a medium bowl.

4. Mix wet ingredients in a larger bowl.

5.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir to incorporate.

4.  Line your muffin tin (I found parchment paper liners at Sprouts!) and fill the liners with about 2tbsp of batter. Add 1/2-1 tbsp of jam. Top with another tbsp of batter. Your liners should be 2/3-3/4 full. Adjust amount of batter depending on size of your tins.

5. Bake 18-20 minutes or until muffin tops are golden/browned lightly and stick in a knife tip or tooth pick to come out clean.


PRESERVING JUICE:
Co-worker recommended a great way to avoid waste when you have a trove of lemons. She boils the juice and skims off any foam. Then puts it into a very clean container (perhaps dip a glass jar and it's lid separately, in boiling water with tongs...that is what I end up doing for freezer jam). She reports that the juice will keep for months this way. I plan to try this out this weekend with my remaining fruits and will report back if I notice anything growing (if I don't use it up first...lemon bars are still tempting me!) *UPDATE: won't get to report on this afterall, Dave made some fresh squeezed lemonade for Super Bowl.*

What is your must have eats for the Super Bowl?