It's round 2 of midnight muffin madness. Once again I find myself making muffins in the dead of night for "Other People". Of course, I couldn't just make the same muffins again - that would be boring! So this time I making Apple Crumble Pie Muffins.
The wet: 1 egg, 1 cup buttermilk, 1/2 cup melted butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, 1/4 cup apple butter, 1 cup grated apple, 1 cup diced apple. Plus for the topping: 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 Tablespoons butter.
The dry: 2 1/4 cup flour, 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon cardamon. Plus for the topping: 1/3 cup flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon cardamon.
Let's talk apples. You need a tart apple and a sweet apple. One of them has to stay firm when you bake it and the other needs to get all soft. If you do this, you will have a great appley taste when you bake it. If you don't, it will be appley, but not great. Just plain old apple. It all depends on what's in season. I used Granny Smith and Royal Gala (since I couldn't find Braeburn).
Measure out all of your dry ingredients and mix them together.
Peel your apples one at a time or they will get all brown. Add the lemon juice to a 2 cup measuring cup that you're going to put the grated and diced apples into.
I just used a hand grater to grate them up - 1 Granny Smith and 1 Gala. It gives a nice consistent size and isn't a big deal to take out or clean up like a food processor would have been. Toss those in the measuring cup and toss them in the lemon juice.
Dice up the apple - 1 more Granny Smith and 1 more Gala. Toss them in with the grated apple and stir them to coat with the lemon juice.
Toss the grated and diced apples into the dry mixture and stir them to get them all coated. This way the fruit won't sink to the bottom of the muffin.
Whisk together your wet ingredients. If you let the butter cool a bit after it's melted, you won't risk scrambling the egg.
Add the wet to the dry and stir it in quickly. Think 1-2-3-4-5-done. If you over stir it, you will have hockey pucks - and since it's not hockey season, there really won't be anything to do with the muffins.
Put all of the topping ingredients in a bowl and mash them together with a fork - or if you want to be fancy, use a pastry cutter. Since it's midnight muffin madness, I'm not being fancy and I used a fork.
Keep at it until it's all mixed together and looks like sand. This is what "makes" these muffins, so make sure the butter is mashed in well.
Scoop the muffin mixture into a lined muffin tin leaving about a 1/4-inch space from the top.
Take a nice teaspoon of the topping and
sprinkle it around the edge of the muffin. Don't sprinkle it in the middle because it will stop the muffins from rising - so they'll taste good, but they won't look that great.
Bake at 375-degrees for 25 minutes. Remove from the tin and let them cool on a rack - then remind your DH that they are for "Other People" and he should Not Eat Them.
You'll get 24 muffins - or as my DH tried to convince me, 23 muffins. I was sure there were 24.
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