Being the middle of winter here in New Zealand, there are loads of juicy lemons going free at the moment, and I nabbed some from the in-laws beach house out on the Awhitu Peninsula.

Last week I had a mega baking marathon, and I distributed the results among some family and friends 🙂 I’ve got some new mini-loaf tins that I wanted to try, so I found a recipe for Lemon Poppyseed Muffins on the Baking Makes Things Better blog, that I cooked in the new tins.  They were absolutely delicious, with a lovely lemony flavour and pretty easy to make.

Lemon Poppyseed Mini Loaves
Makes 10

150g butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg beaten
rind and juice of 2 lemons
125g sour cream (I used unsweetened plain yoghurt instead)
1 1/2 cups of flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 tbsp poppy seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease your mini loaf tins
2. Cream the butter and sugar, and stir in the remaining ingredients until just combined. Spoon into the prepared tins until half around 3/4 full.

3. Bake for 20 minutes, until an inserted skewer comes out clean.  Leave to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

To make the icing:

Using an electric beater, mix butter, lemon zest and vanilla together until all the lumps are gone. Add the milk and quickly cream into the butter mixture. Mix in the sugar half a cup at a time, and cream on high for 2 minutes. Mix in the lemon juice and spread onto mini-loaves.  I dipped the edges of each of mine into extra poppyseeds. You could also try decorate them with candied lemon peel.