Lemon Poppyseed Mini Muffins

So. I don't like to cook, as most people have known. But when we started the juice diet and looked up recipes to try when we were done, I hand-picked 90% of the recipes based on the ingredients and the ease of them. I discovered that the crockpot was my friend, and I have enjoyed perfecting a chili recipe (to be entered into a chili competition at work this October, yay!) and a chipotle lime chicken recipe (which we most recently tried on nachos: wow!).

But I found a Hungry Girl recipe for "Yum Yum Brownie Muffins" that called for a box of cake mix and a 15oz can of pumpkin. A regular sized muffin was only 180 calories this way (even a devil's food one!), so I wrote the recipe down. I read some of the reviews on it, though, and while everyone agreed the texture was moist and great, they almost all said the pumpkin detracted from the chocolate taste and it was slightly bland. One lady said she used 15oz of applesauce instead, and voila! So I have done the same thing, and these muffins are SUPER moist. Plus I make mini muffins so you can pop a few more, and they are still low calorie. Betty Crocker has "Super Moist" style cake mixes which are great, and Duncan Hines has some wonderful ones as well. I've tried chocolate chocolate-chip ones, strawberry chocolate-chip ones, butter yellow ones, and chocolate caramel-chip ones (the caramel chips were a great idea, bad product, so I'm working on tweaking that one...).

I have several different kinds of mixes I'm anxious to try at home, and I made a new one the other day for Andrew: lemon poppyseed mini muffins. I thought they were WAY too lemony (I'm barely a fan of lemon things), but he loved them. So did the coworkers he took them in for. So here are some pictures and instructions on how to make them:

Lemon Poppyseed Mini Muffins

Ingredients:

1 box lemon cake mix (I used Duncan Hines, but Betty Crocker makes one as well)
1 3/4 cup plain applesauce
poppyseeds

This is really all you need!!

First things first, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Then in a bowl, you mix the applesauce and cake mix until a smooth batter forms (just takes a few moments).

I had some tiny lumps I couldn't smooth out, but you couldn't tell in the finished product. So now you've got everything mixed, it's time to add poppyseeds. I just sprinkled some on top, like this:

Then I stirred them in to see how it looked. I ended up just sprinkling a little bit at a time and stirring until it looked alright to me, there's no right or wrong amount to stir in really.

Now, I have a 24-count mini muffin tin, and you can either spray it with non-stick spray or use muffin cups. I've done it both ways, and trust me: muffin cups are the way to go! Especially with this recipe, as I ended up needing the tray as soon as the first batch was done to make 16 more muffins leftover from the first time.

To fill, I take a small spoon, get an overflowing spoonful, and dangle it over the cups. The batter slides off and drops into the cups.

This is the fastest and easiest way to do it. Don't fill them TOO full, because the batter is light and they tend to puff up some. Cook them at 400 degrees for 11 minutes (I'd start out at 10 and see how they look, you want them still sticky and moist on top, not too dry, and a toothpick coming out clean). I've tried 10, 11, and 12 minutes, and in my oven 11 is the magic number.

When they are done, they will look like this:

Andrew's been obsessed with them, haha. I had enough batter left to make most of a second pan full:

And that was that! They are quick, they are easy, and they are yummy! I'm also going to experiment with cinnamon applesauce and see how that goes. But you can do this with ANY flavor cake mix you want, it's easy, light, gooey, and low-calorie. Definitely try them out!