Lemon Cranberry Muffins

Week two of lockdown. The new normal, which isn't normal at all — it's a house with five people in it all day, every day, the walls closer than they used to be, the noise louder, the silence when it comes more fragile. Kevin works at the dining room table. His conference calls bleed into the kitchen, the murmur of insurance jargon mixing with the sound of me chopping onions, a strange duet of two careers sharing one house that was built for evenings and weekends, not for this.

I can't visit Dad. That's the thing that sits in my chest like a stone. Roger is seventy-nine years old with a bypassed heart and Marlene is sixty-eight and the virus targets exactly the people they are — older, rural, far from hospitals that can handle the worst of it. I call every day. Twice a day. Mom answers and says, "We're fine, Diane." Dad picks up the other phone and says, "Stop calling." He doesn't mean it. He means he's scared and Iowa men don't say they're scared, they say "stop calling," and the translation is, "I'm glad you call."

The garden saved us this week. Jack's seedlings were ready for hardening off — the process of taking indoor plants outside for increasing intervals, acclimating them to sun and wind, preparing them for the transplant. Jack set up a station on the deck: trays of seedlings in the morning sun, brought inside at three PM when the wind picks up, back out the next morning. A routine. A purpose. In a world where school is a screen and friends are a memory and the playground is closed, the seedlings are the assignment that doesn't require WiFi. Jack carried them out each morning with the concentration of a nurse transporting patients. The plants didn't know about the virus. The plants just grew.

I made sourdough starter. Everyone was making sourdough in March 2020 — it was the pandemic hobby, the thing you did when the grocery store ran out of yeast and the internet told you that flour and water and time could create something alive. I mixed flour and water in a jar, set it on the counter, and fed it every twelve hours, watching for the bubbles that meant the wild yeast had found it. By Thursday, the jar was bubbling. By Friday, it smelled sour and yeasty and alive. I named it Marlene. The starter is Marlene. Everything alive in my kitchen is named for my mother.

Marlene the starter needed twelve more hours before she’d be ready for anything, and I needed to bake now — that particular restless ache that lockdown put in my hands, the need to make something real and finished by dinner. I had dried cranberries in the back of the pantry and lemons in the fruit bowl going slightly soft, and I remembered this recipe I’d flagged years ago and never gotten around to. The lemon was exactly right: not heavy, not a project, just bright and clean and done in an hour, something I could set on the counter next to the bubbling jar and feel like the kitchen was doing what kitchens are supposed to do.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons lemon zest (from about 2 lemons)
3/4 cup dried cranberries
2 large eggs
3/4 cup plain whole-milk yogurt (or sour cream)
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (from about 2 lemons)
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Lemon glaze (optional): 3/4 cup powdered sugar + 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 375°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners or grease generously with butter. Set aside.
Combine dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest until evenly combined. Stir in the dried cranberries so they’re coated in the flour mixture — this helps keep them from sinking.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, yogurt, lemon juice, melted butter, and vanilla extract until smooth.
Fold together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold gently with a rubber spatula just until combined — a few streaks of flour are fine. Do not overmix or the muffins will be tough.
Fill and bake. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake for 18–22 minutes, until the tops are lightly golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Cool. Let muffins cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. If glazing, whisk together powdered sugar and lemon juice until smooth and drizzle over muffins once they are just slightly warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Lemon Cranberry Muffins — What I Baked While Waiting for Marlene to Wake Up