Lemon muffins with Nutella

Ninka and I were supposed to make muffins on Tuesday. But somehow her enthusiasm faded, so we put it off until today. I’d forgotten, but Ninka remembered, so we started working out what we had the ingredients for. We settled on lemon muffins. But to keep things from being too ordinary, lemon muffins with Nutella.

It turns out to be an almost perfect combination. I can imagine a better one, but Ninka, a chocolate lover, probably can’t. The muffins from this recipe are wonderfully light, moist and creamy-chocolaty, with a delicious hint of lemon and lime.

I’ll admit that someone with no sense whatsoever and no physiological limits could probably go on eating them forever. I limited myself to 4 (in words: four). They’re good. I recommend them 🙂

At a glance:

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Baking time: 22 minutes

Baking temperature: 200 degrees Celsius

Yield: 18 small muffins (the size of the cheapest silicone baking cups from Ikea)

How many calories: my friend who’s on a diet can only dream of them

Ingredients for light, delicate Nutella muffins:

• 200 grams of wheat flour
• 3/4 glass of white sugar
• grated zest of 1 lemon
• 4 tablespoons of lemon juice
• 4 tablespoons of lime juice
• 1 heaped tablespoon of Nutella
• 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• 1 hen’s egg
• 60 grams of butter
• 185 ml of milk

How to make extra-lemony muffins:

I melted the butter in a small frying pan.

Into one bowl I put the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, sugar and grated lemon zest (the grating wasn’t going very well, even though I’d thoroughly washed and scalded the lemon beforehand; it must have been so heavily waxed that it was hard work, so in the end it wasn’t the zest of a whole lemon, more like half). I mixed everything thoroughly. Actually, little Ninka did that.

Into the other bowl, Ninka poured the lemon and lime juice and the milk, and added the hen’s egg. She mixed thoroughly (the egg needs to be well beaten). Finally she added the melted butter (slightly cooled).

Then we mixed the contents of the first and second bowls together (Ninka poured the wet ingredients into the dry). And we added a heaped tablespoon of Nutella and worked it evenly through the batter (it should be light brown). The batter is quite runny.

I poured the batter into silicone baking cups (it rises quite a lot, so no more than 3/4 full). I put them in the oven, preheated to 200 degrees Celsius. I baked them for about 22 minutes.

After baking, the muffins need to rest (although they’re delicious warm), because they’re very light and buttery, and when we tried to take them out of the cups, they fell apart. So it’s best to wait until they’ve cooled, and then they pop out whole without any trouble. Delicious lemon muffins, ready. Enjoy!