Hello lovelies,
as soon as the first apples from the tree behind the house land in the kitchen, the baking starts here, and my apple streusel muffins with cinnamon are the first thing out of the oven. A light batter with apple pieces, a thick cap of crunchy cinnamon butter streusel on top, and the whole kitchen smells of autumn. The recipe makes 12 muffins and takes 45 minutes including baking.
Many of you have been baking my vegan apple cinnamon muffins without egg for years, and they stay my recipe whenever someone wants to bake without egg and butter. This streusel version is their classic sister: egg, milk and butter in the batter, which makes them a little moister and more cake-like, and a layer of streusel that crunches when you bite in.
The streusel really is half the battle. Cold butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon get rubbed into coarse crumbs with your fingertips and never kneaded, then they stay crunchy in the oven instead of melting into a crust. The same streusel goes on my vegan apple cake with crumbles in autumn, there as a layer over the whole cake.
For the batter the rule is the same as for every muffin: stir only until flour and liquid are just combined, a few lumps may stay. Stir for too long and you get tough muffins. I learned that with my rhubarb streusel muffins for spring, which work on exactly the same principle, only with a sour fruit instead of a sweet one.
Apples are not the end of this recipe, though. In summer, blueberries and raspberries go into the same batter here, as in my berry muffins with fresh berries, and the cinnamon streusel suits them surprisingly well too.
I hope you bake these muffins soon, ideally a double batch straight away, because here they have never lived longer than 2 days. And once the plums are ripe, do try my plum chocolate muffins with dark chocolate too, my other autumn favorite.
