Applesauce Streusel Muffins

I successfully finished all my homework and readings for the day by evening time, so I decided to bake something! There was a very old golden delicious apple in the fridge, from months ago, so I decided to cut it up for applesauce. It was the plainest applesauce possible, just the apple, and a sliver of lemon. Not even a bit of added sugar.

So I had applesauce. Unsweetened applesauce. And I still felt like baking. To be precise, I had just over half a cup of applesauce. This meant that my internet recipe hunt for an apple quick bread or muffin recipe had to require just that amount of applesauce, or twice the amount. (I found one, which required 1 cup of applesauce. I could have halved the recipe, but that would make one and a half eggs. No good.

And so, voila! (I have been watching too many black and white Julia Child episodes on youtube, can you tell?) Apple muffins!

Applesauce Streusel Muffins

Recipe adapted from Epicurious

Makes 6 precious muffins

Ingredients:

For the muffins:

3/4 cup all purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

pinch of salt

1 egg

1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp light brown sugar

5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (homemade, if possible!)

1/4 cup pecans, chopped

For the streusel topping:

2 tbsp all purpose flour

2 tbsp butter (chilled, cut into cubes)

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp pecans, chopped

Putting it together:

Preheat the oven to 4oo°F. Grease six muffin holes with melted butter. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together. Beat the egg. Add the sugar to the beaten egg and stir to mix. Add the melted butter. Stir to mix again. Make a depression in the flour mixture, and pour this wet mixture in. Add the applesauce. Mix everything together, with just a few stirs. Be sure not to over-mix, as this may result in leathery muffins. We're not preparing juggling balls! Spoon the muffin batter into the prepared muffin holes. Each hole should be 3/4 filled or so.

Now for the streusel. Start with the flour, cinnamon and sugar in a mixing bowl. Plonk the butter cubes into the flour, and roll them about to coat. Using just the fingertips, rub the butter into the flour. At first the mixture will look like mostly little flour crumbs with some huge butter chunks. You want to rub-in until there are only medium-sized crumbs. Add the pecans and mix.

Finally, simply spoon the streusel topping generously over the muffins. Then, into the preheated oven they go, for 20 minutes. Proceed with doing the dishes, while the aroma of cinnamon, apples, and the just generally pleasant smell of things-baking-in-the-oven make you wanna go, "Ahhhhhhhh!"