• Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C, gas mark 4).  Start by melting the butter either on the hob or blast in the microwave. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and melted butter until light fluffy.

​

• Crack the eggs into the sugary buttery mixture, along with a tablespoon of the flour that you are going to be adding in later, to prevent the mix from curdling. Add the milk, vanilla extract, lemon juice, lemon zest and mix gently. As you can see, this is very much a "just bung it all in" kind of recipe.

​

• Next, sift in your flour along with the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and poppy seeds. With muffins, you want to make sure that you don't overmix the ingredients so just be careful not to over do it with the mixing. Just gently fold in your dry ingredients but make sure that you don't have any spots of unmixed flour.  It's not the end of the world if you do overmix but just thought I would let ya know that it works better if you don't. Unless Paul Hollywood is judging your bakes, it doesn't really matter.

​

• Spoon your mixture into your muffin cases (make sure you get the proper muffin cases that are big and not the fairy cake kind of size). When you get to about 3/4 of the way filled, add a dollop (about a teaspoon) of lemon curd, then keep filling with muffin mixture until the cases are almost completely filled. This will give you that classic muffin top effect.  I just used store bought lemon curd instead of homemade (Tescos finest- I was feeling fancy) because aint nobody got time for that. If you don't have any lemon curd then don't worry. They just won't taste quite as lemony but will still be scrummy.

​

• This is where you have to trust me.  It sounds a bit mad but pop them in the oven at 200°C for 5 minutes and then turn the heat DOWN to 180°C for the remaining 17 minutes. Total baking time is 22 minutes if that makes sense. Get your timers out lads. This is what gives them that perfect crunch on the top edges, aka the best bit. You probably want to get started on the drizzly glaze when they have about 5 minutes to go.  

​

• For the drizzle, add your icing sugar, teaspoon of lemon curd and lemon juice to a small saucepan and gently heat on the hob until it looks runny and glaze-like. Should take about 3 minutes or so. You can carefully take out a teaspoon sample to test it and free to adjust the sugar to lemon ratio to suit your own taste. I like it quite sharp. Fun fact- if you throw your lemons in the microwave for 10 seconds you will get more juice out of them. Thanks for the tip mum.  If you want it to be more of a thick icing than a drizzle, then just heat for less time on the hob or don't heat at all. Also, if you would rather have the icing effect, leave the muffins to cool fully first before you pour it over.

​

• Take the muffins out of the oven, pop them on a cooling rack for about 5 minutes and then pour the drizzle over them. It can get a bit messy so put a plate underneath the wire rack to collect the yumminess. This also leaves you with a plate of the delicious glaze that you can add to the muffins after or you could just lick the plate clean. Your choice.  Ideally, leave to cool completely before you eat them but let's face it, who has that kind of self control.