You’ll never guess that these delightful lemon muffins are made with yellow summer squash! They are amazingly moist and perfectly delicious.
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Hi friends!
How are you? I’m still kind of wondering what happened to July. It seemed to come and go in a blur.
Here it is August and I’m pretty sure this month will be similar.
The garden is producing like crazy right now. I battled the grasshopper infestation early on and it seemed to work because all of my plants are doing so much better than last year.
Of course with the good harvest, the challenge always becomes what to do with all of these garden beauties.
We have so many favorite garden veggie recipes (many of which I’ve posted here on my blog).
But if you know me, you know I’m always looking for new ideas.
I got the inspiration for these muffins from Marti who left a comment on these yellow squash muffins wondering if she could add lemon to make them more like lemon pound cake. I though that was an ingenious idea and decided that the texture would be closer to what I was looking for if I used this lemon squash poppy seed bread as a starting place instead.
With a few basic adaptations, these lemon squash muffins were created.
And boy are they good.
Lemons and yellow squash were meant to be married together. They go together like peanut butter and jelly, my friends.
A few recipe tips
This lemon squash muffin recipe is pretty basic. It comes together quickly in one bowl; hurray for less dishes!
The mixing method adds the flour in 1/2 cup increments. It may seem a bit tedious and unimportant, but it really helps to create the light and tender crumb of these muffins. So don’t try to shortcut and add the flour all at once.
I like to shred the yellow squash using a food pressor. It goes fast and the blade I use shreds the yellow squash pretty fine.
Shredding the squash with a fine blade of a hand grater should also work.
This recipe uses fresh lemon juice AND lemon zest. Make sure you zest the lemons before you juice them.
It may seem obvious to some, but there have been a time or two in my cooking adventures that I’ve forgot to do it and regretted it. And now I know from experience that it’s so much easier to zest lemons when they are whole.
I like to use a #20 cookie scoop (aff. link) to divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups. It makes the job easy with nice looking results.
These muffins freeze really well, which is awesome because the harvest comes on fiercely, but never seems to last long enough.
I’m hopeful that I can enjoy these lemon squash muffins from my freezer when the harvest is over.
That assumes that I’ll be able to hide them in a place where my posse of muffin eaters won’t find them. Wish me luck, my friends. I’ve already made dozens of these muffins and they never seem to last long.
Lemon Squash Muffins
You'll never guess that these delightful lemon muffins are made with yellow summer squash! They are amazingly moist and delicious.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter melted
- 2 cups (15 ounces) granulated sugar
- ½ tablespoon finely grated lemon zest from about 1 ½ large lemons
- ¼ cup fresh lemon juice from about 1 ½ large lemons
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 3 cups (15 ounces) all-purpose white flour divided
- 2 cups (about 1 pound) grated yellow summer squash from about 2 small to medium summer squash
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line two 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners and set aside.
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In a large mixing bowl, add melted butter, white sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla extract. Cream together until fluffy and light in color.
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Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until fully incorporated before adding another.
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Evenly sprinkle the salt, baking soda, and baking powder over the top of the mixture and mix well.
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Add the flour ½ cup at a time and mix entirely between additions.
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With a rubber spatula, gently fold in the summer squash.
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Divide the batter evenly between the muffin tins (I like to use a #20 cookie scoop).
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Bake at 425 degrees F for 5 minutes. Then lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake an additional 18-20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the muffins comes out clean. Be careful not to check them too early or you may cause them to sink slightly in the middle.
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Place muffins on cooling rack to cool 5-10 minutes before carefully removing from the muffin tins to cool completely (about an hour). Store covered well for about three days or muffins can be frozen (see note).
Recipe Notes
1. To freeze muffins, cool completely and then pack into gallon freezer bags and seal. For best results, freeze the same day as baked.
Recipe Source: Heather @ The Cook’s Treat
All images and text ©The Cook’s Treat
Disclaimer: post contains affiliate links for items on Amazon.
Excellent recipe, thanks . Have you added any others recently?
I made these from the recipe and added poppy seeds, they are amazing. Thank you for sharing.
Glad you liked them Donna!
A friend sent me this recipe a few weeks ago and I finally made them tonight. They are so tasty…sweet enough to be a snack but not too much that they will be great for breakfast tomorrow. Some are already in the freezer for future treats.
Thanks Aimee!