This is a recipe for impressive, jumbo-sized, restaurant-quality, bakery-style, from-scratch Lemon Ginger Muffins.

For all the ginger in these muffins, they don’t taste like flat-out ginger. And for as relatively little lemon, they do taste like lemon. The flavors overlap and blend. This seems to move the lemon slightly toward “citrus,” and underneath it, you get a muted ginger backdrop and a very mild spiciness way in the background. The muffins are sweet, but not sweet like cupcakes – which is perfect: they’re very much muffins. The crumb is open and light. But also has a substantive denseness, almost like one of it’s distant relatives was a pound cake.

Restaurant Quality

These are restaurant quality muffins. No question. As beautiful as anything you’d see at the best cafe, and so delicious that you’re going to feel like you ought to open your own cafe. PERFECT with a cappuccino. 

Baking Tips

• If you chop the crystallized ginger to half the size of peas, their texture won’t be noticeable in the muffin. Make them the size of raisins if you want them to contribute texture. 
• I use an ice cream disher to portion out the batter. I know, I know, I know: like you, I’ve seen people do this in videos, and I’ve thought, “Oh, how precious. What the hell is wrong with you?” But here’s the thing: if you’re a true perfectionist, you have to get the same amount of batter into each muffin cup. Otherwise, you risk that some muffins will be done before others, and there’s no way to remove them one at a time. An ice cream disher is a very easy way of creating an equal distribution with minimal effort. 
• I like to use the four corner cups of my six-cup jumbo muffin tin. I’m not sure that this makes a difference.
• The glaze that I produced looks like glass. It looks wet, but it’s not. It is slightly tacky, but I wouldn’t call it sticky. If you want a whiter glaze, you can vigorously whisk the sugar once you take it off the stove, and if that doesn’t do it, you can vigorously whisk in a mounded tablespoon of sifted powdered sugar. 
• You might notice that my standard-oven baking temperature doesn’t jibe with my convection toaster oven temperature. In a standard oven, 357ºF works. Be sure to check the muffins before they’re supposed to be ready. If they seem to brown too deeply before finishing, cover them with foil. With the convection (smart oven, toaster oven) oven, I experimented with a hotter initial temperature, and a lower finishing temperature, in order to try to get a huge initial rise out of the muffins.

Servings and Leftovers

One jumbo muffin is definitely a plus-size serving. You’ll feel satisfied afterward. Cutting one in half and sharing it with a friend is not only a nice thing to do, but a good thing to do.

Store the muffins at room temperature, loosely covered. The next day, as you’d expect, the muffins will be dryer, but not dried out.  

Social Learning

Muffins are small-size versions of quickbreads, made with less sugar, fat, and eggs. Like pancakes, they are typically mixed gently, and only until all the dry ingredients are moistened, which is what gives them their open, tender interior. They stale quickly because what little fat there is, is dispersed unevenly, and thus can’t protect much of the starch.

This method – mixing wet and dry ingredients gently and minimally – is what distinguishes muffins from cupcakes, in which unmelted butter is creamed with sugar as an initial step. Muffins are typically not frosted, but even if you do frost one, they’re distinguished from cupcakes by the results of the wet-dry, muffin method.

Social Learning and Backstory:

The inspiration for these muffins came from one that I bought. I took the contents off the ingredient label, pretended that it was a technical challenge on the Great British Baking Show, and imagined Prue saying to Paul, “Well at this point, the bakers should know how to make a muffin, so I didn’t give them any directions, just the ingredients.” And, if I do have to say so myself, the rest of the Make It Like a Man! crew awarded me star baker. 

Four jumbo muffins. I imagine you’re either excited about that, or frustrated by it. Jumbo muffins have become the norm – at least in my world, which is a world where cafes and pastry shops are absolutely everyday events. Standard muffins seem … humble. At best, nostalgic. So I want jumbo muffins, but six of them doesn’t make sense at my house. Muffins have a short shelf life, and there’s no way we’ll get to the sixth one before eating it is merely a reminder of how good they were the day they were baked.

Lemon Ginger Muffins

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. References: Harold McGee, “Thick Batter Foods: Batter Breads and Cakes,” in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (New York: Scribner, 2004), 554. Thank you, Kesor. Thank you, ⌘+C. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #2 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs. 

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