Lemon Raspberry Muffins

Wow . . . over a week between posts this time.  In that time, I had a really bad day of throwing up and was unable to look at / prepare / eat food for awhile.  I also had an amazing trip to Washington (with Little, my travel buddy) to visit my friend and college roommate and then yesterday, fall quarter began I'm back to work.  No wonder I'm tired!

Before all that happened, I made some great muffins.  I've never done the sugar / citrus part like this before in a recipe and I'm a huge fan.  Our farmer's market had some yummy raspberries and I had looked at this recipe for awhile.  I can see this being the base for a lot of variations (different citrus in place of lemon, other berries instead of raspberries).  The unfortunate part was I didn't take the muffins out of the oven as soon as I should have and I had a lot of raspberry seeds stuck in my teeth but still, they were so worth it.

Happy fall (tomorrow) - are you ready for all the pumpkiny stuff I'm going to make this fall?  We're off to the beach for the last day of summer - enjoy your weekend!

Lemon Raspberry Muffins (makes 1 dozen)
from Eating Well July/Aug 07

1 lemon
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup nonfat buttermilk
1/3 c. canola oil
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup white whole-wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1.5 cups fresh or frozen (but not thawed) raspberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line 12 large muffin cups with paper liners (or spray with cooking spray).

Use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest from the lemon in long strips.  Put it in a food processor with the sugar.  Pulse until the zest is very finely chopped into the sugar. I only have a mini chopper so at this point, I just whisked the rest of the wet ingredients into the sugar in a bowl.  If you have a regular food processor, add the buttermilk, oil, egg and vanilla to the food processor and pulse until blended.

In a large bowl, combine the flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Add the buttermilk mixture and fold until almost blended (don't over mix).  Gently fold in the raspberries.  Divide among the muffin cups.

Bake the muffins until the edges and top are golden, 15 -20 minutes.  Cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.  Best served warm!