I used to make similar muffins to these many years ago. My first flat had a lemon tree out back, and couple of hungry flatmates, and these went down well. Our lemon tree has lots of lemons ripening at the moment, so we decided to give these a go. The recipe is a slight variation of this one from just a mum nz.
Ingredients:
Muffins:
1 cup white sugar
2 cups self-raising flour
zest of 2 lemons
100 grams butter, melted
2 free-range eggs
1/2 cup milk
Topping:
juice of 2 lemons
1/4 cup white sugar
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 200°C (392°F).
Combine sugar, flour and lemon zest in a large bowl.
Combine melted butter, eggs and milk and whisk together.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in wet ingredients. Fold ingredients together until combined.
Split mixture evenly across 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Bake at 200°C (392°F) for 20 minutes or until muffins spring back when touched.
Make the topping by stirring together lemon juice and sugar to combine. Pour sugar suspension over muffins while still warm.
What the kids can do:
Hand washing: Don’t forget to get the kids (and grownups too of course) to wash their hands before you start. Little hands always seem to end up touching everything, including the ingredients. This is extra important given the current Covid-19 situation. For good 20 second hand wash, have them sing “happy birthday to me” twice.
Lemons: Miss 5 likes to zest the lemons. I just have to remind her to turn the lemon regularly or we end up with a lot of grated pith. She also likes to juice the lemons. We put a sieve in between to catch the pips.
Eggs: Pro tip for breaking eggs with a 5 year old, break eggs into a separate glass bowl before adding to your other ingredients. That way you can see and pick out any bits of shell before they are added in by mistake. I like to use free range eggs, because it is kinder to the chickens, and they also taste better. Bear in mind that raw eggs can carry Salmonella so wash little hands if they end up the raw egg. I also don’t recommend eating raw cake batter, just in case.
Mixing the ingredients: My daughter helped mix all the ingredients. The biggest messes seen to happen when sifting and mixing dry ingredients with the kids. A great tip from reader Dana M is to put a towel down underneath, which catches any stray ingredients for easy cleaning. When folding wet into dry ingredients, you want to mix thoroughly, but not too much or the cake will go flat. This usually requires the grown up to either finish off the mixing and/or intervene before things are mixed too much.
Cupcake cases: Miss 5 likes to add the cupcake cases to the muffin tray and then spoon in the ingredients. She is getting pretty good at it with minimal mess made and only a minimum amount of batter redistribution required on my part.
Keeping Them Occupied 