Cinnamon crumble apple muffin

Instead of giving your teacher (or kid’s teacher) an apple, give some crumbled apple muffins. There is a specific smell that comes along with fall cooking, its warm, comforting, a little spicy, and always a savory and sweet sense at the same time. These muffins start to fill your house with a wonderful smell the second you place them in the oven. We wanted to combine an apple pie, with an apple strudel, with a muffin, and we were left with this fabulous thing! So enjoy this recipe, make it for the family, the neighbors, anyone you like, because it is sure to bring a smile to everyone’s face.

*brown sugar is a huge part of this recipe, so pretty much just have a cup of it set aside.

Ingredients:

Muffin:
2 cups flour
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
½ cup butter (at room temperature)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 ¼ tsp vanilla
1 ½ cup chopped apples (we prefer honey crisps, or pink ladies)

Crumbs:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 Tlb. flour
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tlb butter

Icing:
3 Tlb powdered sugar
2 Tlb milk (give or take)

Start by preheating your oven to 375,  while that heats, grease and line a muffin tray with 12 muffin papers, and fill each one with a spoonful of brown sugar to hold it down and to create a bit of crust by patting down with your finger. Set aside.  

Heat a sauce pan to medium high, and heat your apples and a few spoon fulls of brown sugar until slightly softened. Set aside.

To make the strudel bits on top; in small bowl, mix the 1/3 cup of brown sugar, 1 Tlb of flour, ¼ tsp of cinnamon, and 1 Tlb of butter. Beat together until it starts to create small balls of sand like looking things. This is where a lot of the tasty is!

Now to make the actual batter ;in a large bowl beat together butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. As best as you can take the apples out of the melted sugar and stir in (too much added sugar will cause muffins to be a bit doughy).

In a medium sized bowl mix together your dry mix: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add your dry mix to your wet mix a bit at a time. The mix will seem pretty thick and dry, but when it bakes it will be the perfect consistency, and the apples will moisten the cake as well.

Now using a large spoon fill each muffin cup about ¾ of the way, and then sprinkle with your crumble mix you made in the beginning. Once all are loaded, place in oven, and set for 20 minutes (at the half way point turn the muffins around in the oven).

While the muffins are cooking, make the icing by pouring a little bit of milk at a time into your sugar, until you reach the consistency that you desire.

When muffins are done, remove from the oven, let cool for 10 minutes, and then drizzle icing on, and eat up! Damn they are good!!!