Matthew Woolen is a master pastry chef and has worked in a variety of Seattle restaurants, including gastropub Old Sage, Zhu Dang, and a gluten-free restaurant called Capitol Cider.

Matthew Woolen

<a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-blueberry-muffins">Blueberry muffins</a>, <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ultimate-corn-muffins">corn muffins</a> ... doesn’t matter what kind of muffin you’re making, the name of the game when making the ultimate version of these muffins is dialing up their flavors without compromising the texture of what are basically cakes. Like corn muffins, lemon-poppy seed muffins run up against a textural obstacle. You want to pack the muffin batter with lemon flavor, which is relatively easy (load it up with zest, extract, and fresh juice!), but you also want it to be packed with poppy seeds, and poppy seeds are, well, gritty. Throw an excess of poppy seeds into a batter and you’ll get more poppy flavor, but you’ll also get a muffin that eats like it was made of ball bearings.The key turns out to be soaking the poppy seeds and then blending them. Soaking softens the seed hulls enough that you can incorporate a lot into the batter without creating a gritty, unpleasant texture. Blending the soaked seeds makes the texture even better: The blender doesn’t turn them into a purée so much as it cracks the seed hulls, yielding a much more seamless texture. You get tons of poppy seed flavor, no toothpick required.With those elements squared away, we employ good cake-making method—creaming the sugar and fat before adding in eggs, then using alternating additions of the recipe’s liquid and dry components—to make a muffin with a fine, light crumb, bursting with lemon-poppy flavor.

Ultimate Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins