Salted lemon muffins: a recipe

Salted lemon muffin

I blame the salted oatmeal cookies.

Ever since they came into my life, I've been obsessed with finding other mouth-watering salty-sweet combinations.

This time, I forced it.

When I saw "lemon salt lemon cupcakes" as a link in my RSS feed, I jumped on it. It was a post from Helene at her lovely lovely lovely blog, Tartelette (I aspire to taking such amazing yet simple photographs -- someday, when I've graduated from point-and-shoot, I think).

Helene's cupcakes look delightful, with a beautifully light buttercream frosting and just a hint of salt. But, you know me, if there's frosting on it, I can't call it "breakfast" without guilt, so I decided to morph the cupcakes into muffins.

Result? I thought they were perfect -- Mr. Ninj, not so much. He thought I was a bit heavy-handed with the salt on top but I guess it depends on how much of a salt whore you are.

If you ensure that each bite includes a little of the salted top and a lot of the lemony, airy muffin and you love salty-sweet, I think you'll be on my side.

Salted Lemon Muffins (barely adapted from Helene Dujardin of Tartelette)

Note: If you don't want to continue my breakfast scam, be sure to check out Helene's full recipe, which includes instructions for a buttercream frosting.

Ingredients
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
zest and juice of one lemon
kosher or sea salt for sprinkling

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well in between each addition.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture and milk alternatively to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Add the zest and lemon juice; beat until smooth.

Fill cupcake tins about 3/4 full and sprinkle lightly with kosher salt or sea salt. Bake for 20 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.