Applesauce Crumb Muffins

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Somehow I made it the entire month of September without making any apple dishes on here. How did I manage that? We love apples and Eliza could eat my weight in applesauce if I let her. So when I saw this applesauce crumb muffin recipe I thought it would be a fun one to make with her. And it would make up for the couple weeks I neglected my blog due to RSV deciding to take over my house. We are all past sickness minus lingering runny noses. But it makes me sad I didn’t get more apple dishes on the blog this past month.

This recipe comes from Beth at The First Year. She has the cutest blog of just desserts. Cake, Cookies, Muffins, and Cheesecake be still my beating heart. Lots of yummy stuff on there. She’s got some cute Halloween desserts you can make on there right now. I need to peruse and see what she has for Christmas cookies. I’ve been looking ahead to see what is going in my Christmas tins this year. Let me know if you go to her site and see something you think would work well for Christmas.

Here’s what you’ll need

• All purpose flour
• baking powder
• baking soda
• salt
• ground cinnamon
• ground nutmeg
• unsweetened applesauce
• brown sugar
• vegetable oil
• eggs

First make up the crumb topping. In a small bowl, mix together 1 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Melt 1 stick unsalted butter and add it to the small bowl. Mix it together with a fork until crumbly and set it aside. You will have more than you need. I saved mine to use later and promptly forgot it had cinnamon in it. So my banana muffins had cinnamon in their crumble, but it turned out ok. Before I forget start your oven preheating to 425 degrees.

Next up is the dry ingredients

In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg. Eliza enjoyed stirring this together. Just make sure to stir slowly like she did so your counters don’t end up covered in powder. Hopefully you have an easier time measuring everything out than I did. Eliza kept rejecting my measuring spoons because she wanted ones from the same family. Her preschool teacher has taught her very well about families.

And now the wet ingredients

Get a large bowl and mix together 1 cup unsweetened applesauce, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1/2 cup vegetable oil. I suggest if you are making this with a toddler in the room that you get out extra applesauce. Eliza ate mine and I ended up having to get more out. Thankfully we still had some or they would have been strawberry applesauce muffins.

Add in 2 large eggs and mix well. Gently mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. The recipe says you’ll get 12 but I had enough batter for 13 muffins. Fill the liners up almost to the top.

Ta-dah! All that’s left is the topping!

Now filling and adding the topping took me forever! My youngest decided it was the perfect time to make a mad dash crawl to the laundry room. So we spent the next ten minutes attempting to fill muffin cups and add topping, while playing run after squealing Richard who thought it was an awesome game. Crumble a generous amount of topping on each cup.

Place the muffins in the oven and cook at 425 degrees for 7 minutes. Then leave the muffins in the oven, but turn the temperature down to 350 degrees. Cook for another 12-14 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. But be careful, do not over cook them. Mine got just a bit too done.

Take the muffins out of the oven and let them cool about 10 minutes before you try taking them out of the pan. If you want to add icing to the top let them cool completely first. I think the muffins are better with the icing. Just make a simple powdered sugar icing to drizzle over the top.

What is a simple powdered sugar icing?

It’s just powdered sugar plus milk. You can substitute nondairy milk or water if you prefer. Some recipes will also have you add vanilla extract as well. For this recipe I did 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and maybe 2 Tablespoons water. The most important thing to remember is you can always add more liquid but once you do you can’t take it away. So add you water/milk SLOWLY! I’ve spent wayyyyyyyyyyy to much time trying to add more powdered sugar in because I got it too runny. So a little at a time and you won’t end up with too much.

Mix it until it is smooth and then drizzle it over the cooled muffins. And you’re done! I like these muffins, but they feel like they are missing something to me. There’s no over the top wow factor. I think the next time I make them, I may add some chopped up apples just to see if that does it for me.