When Life Gives You Lemons...

...make these!

These are so delicious! Little mini perfect bite size pieces of sunshine!

After you take these tart, fabulous, lemony mini muffins out of the oven you dunk them in a lemon sugar liquid mixture and after they have cooled you top them off with a lemon glaze. Delicious, right?

This is such a versatile recipe. You can make mini muffins or a couple of loaves. Or, go for the hybrid version like I did and split the batter to bake both! If you like lemon these definitely won't disappoint. Enjoy!

 Mini Lemon Muffins
Adapted from: Barefoot Contessa Parties!

Ingredients

1/2 pound unsalted butter at room temp
2 1/2 cups of granulated sugar
4 eggs at room temp
1/3 grated lemon zest  (6 to 8 lemons)
3 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of salt
3/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice divided
3/4 cup buttermilk at room temp
1 tsp vanilla

2 cups of confectioners sugar, sifted
4 TBS fresh squeezed lemon juice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease mini muffin tins (and an 8x4 inch bread pan if you want to make a loaf).

Cream butter and granulated sugar with an electric mixer or hand mixer for 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs, one at a time, and the lemon zest.

In a medium bowl sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another small bowl, mix 1/4 cup of lemon juice, the buttermilk and the vanilla. Add the flour and buttermilk mixtures alternately to the batter, beginning and ending with the flour. Divide batter into the bread pan and the mini muffin pans (only fill cups halfway). Bake bread pan for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until cake tester comes out clean. Bake mini muffins for 11-13 minutes and rinse and regrease muffin tins after every batch.

While the cake is baking, combine 1/2 cup of granulated sugar plus 1/2 cup of lemon juice in a small saucepan on medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and let cool. When the cakes are done, cool on a rack with a cookie sheet underneath for 5 minutes. Dunk the mini muffins into the sugar and lemon mixture and pour mixture over loaves and saturate them. Allow cakes to cool completely before glazing.

For the glaze, combine the confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice in a bowl, mixing with a wire whisk until smooth. Pour over the top of the cakes and allow the glaze to drizzle down the sides.