This morning my 8 year old woke up before everyone else and whispered enthusiastically: ” Mummy, let’s make muffins while it’s still quiet!” I was so happy she woke up eager to start the day together, and that I didn’t have to go commando mode and rush her off to school. I’m loving the freedom of summer, and the fact that it won’t be taken away in a few weeks, because we have decided she is going to be homeschooling with her younger sister, instead of returning to school. I get the best parts of her again…her eagerness, helpfulness and joy, instead of her exhausted moodiness after a long day away.

We had wanted to bake the day before but were out of too many things, and would have had to substitute almost everything but flour and lemon in the recipe. I’m all for ground flax egg replacer, almond milk instead of cow’s milk, apple sauce instead of oil, brown sugar instead of white, etc, but we were missing even our replacements.

So while my two oldest girls went on an outing to a horse ranch with friends, the three little ones and I went shopping. For once we bought all the stuff actually in the recipe…lovely butter, creamy milk, nice brown eggs. We even used white sugar instead of granulated because friends had given us a big bag of it. Almost a sin in my hippie herbal veggie family… 😉

The result, lovely fluffy muffins that were proclaimed: “The best ever! Just like ones from a restaurant!” And this even with sneaking in a little less sugar and half whole grain with bran and ground flax flour with the white…can’t totally deny my background! We also squeezed in half the lemon juice of the lemon we grated for the peel, and left out the lemon preserve filling. It would likely be super yummy, but would risk being perceived as an actual fruit by my two picky food purists…

Here’s my quick and easy way to share the recipe with you:

We made a double batch with some plain lemon mini-muffins for my girls who say, “Mmmm, that so plain!” and mean it as a compliment, and some mini-lemon blueberry loaves for the rest of us.

So here’s three cheers to our glorious friends butter and white sugar…and while they might not visit us that often, it’s pretty fun when they do!