With our lemon muffins the lesson is about lemons and the lemon tree. With this lesson, we take a small lemon tree with either blossoms or small lemons already growing on the tree. We teach the children the colours green, yellow, brown of the soil , as well as the concept of fractions. We cut a lemon in half and show them that the two pieces are not whole lemons, but just two halves of the one lemon. The children then lick the piece of lemon we give to them to learn about “sour” . Stimulation in this lesson is general
knowledge, colours, fine motor skills, sensory perception , mathematics and vocabulary.
Ingredients
Lemon muffins
2 ½ cups cake flour
½ cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk or Amasi
½ cup melted butter
¼ – ½ cup pitted, chopped dates
1 tbsp lemon zest
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla essence or vanilla extract
Sticky icing
1 cup icing sugar
2-4 tbsp of fresh lemon juice
If you poke your muffin with a skewer and it comes out clean, your muffins are ready!
Method for lemon muffins with sticky icing
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
Muffins
Line a muffin tin with paper cups or spray with a baking pray. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together. Add the dates to this and stir in. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, melted butter, eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla.
Add the liquids to the dry ingredients and stir just until combined
Fill the holes of the muffin pan with this mixture and bake for 15-20 minutes at 180°C.
Sticky Icing
Mix the lemon juice and icing sugar together to form a runny icing. Drizzle this over the warm muffins. Enjoy!