Roll up your sleeves for National Baking Week and inject a sliver of sunshine into dark autumn evenings with these delicious muffins.

Kcal: 178 per serving

Fat: 3.7g per serving

Sat Fat: 1.1g per serving

Ingredients (makes 12 muffins):

• 320g plain flour
• 2 tbsps poppy seeds
• ½ tsp salt
• 3 tsps baking powder
• 150g caster sugar
• 125g unsalted butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• 45ml lemon juice
• 210ml yoghurt
• Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
• 100g apple, grated
• 100g pear, seeded and diced

For the glaze:

• 125g icing sugar
• 1½ tbsps lemon juice
• 3 tbsps hot water

With muffins as tasty as these, plates seem somewhat irrelevant.

Method

Step 1: Preheat oven to 190ºC (Gas Mark 5). Combine all dry ingredients. Beat together wet ingredients, combine the two and fold in fruit.

Step 2: Spoon into a greased muffin tin. Bake for 25 minutes or until muffins are golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Step 3: Mix all glaze ingredients together. Add more water if you like a thinner glaze. For a thick white glaze, add just enough water for the glaze to have a rich consistency to dip the muffins into.

Step 4: Plunge the head of each muffin into the mixture and allow excess to drip back into the bowl. Place muffins on a rack to let glaze set.

From New York Cult Recipes by Marc Grossman (£20, Murdoch Books), out now in hardback at amazon.co.uk