Raspberry Streusel Muffins

First of all, I would like to congratulate my sister for making her school soccer team and one of the team captains.  With that said, she works out every day and needs a good breakfast to get her going.  However, she doesn't like to eat right away and then runs out of time to eat anything filling enough before school.  And what does an awesome big sister (me!) decide to do? .... bake muffins of course!

She said that she wanted blueberry muffins - awesome, I could eat those every day if I had the metabolism.  Like any good muffin, the struesel topping is the star (or at least for my sister and I).  I had tried a cinnamon streusel muffin before - King Arthur Flour recipe - and my sister didn't like it.  So, I decided to use the left over crumble topping from the Pear and Ginger crumble dessert I made last week.

I found a recipe that had great reviews so I decided that I would try it.  Ok, my definition of trying a recipe is looking at the ratios of ingredients and then tweeking it with other ingredients.  So, I rarely ever try the actual recipe (major faux pas - that is not something I learned from my grandma!!).

I get up this morning ready to bake, have all the ingredients out and I'm mixing and measuring and I forgot to get the blueberries from the freezer.  I go to get them and .... ummmm, no blueberries!!  Great.  Thankfully I had about a cup of frozen raspberries left.  Needless to say, this recipe changed quite a bit from when I printed it offline.

The muffins puffed up beautifully and the aroma is soooo lovely.  The streusel is perfectly golden brown and acts like a cape of brown sugar, buttery delicousness over the muffin.  The muffin itself is so light and tender and moist.

Enjoy and happy baking!

Raspberry Streusel Muffins

Makes 12 muffins                               (adapted from All Recipes)

Muffin Ingredients

1 ½ cups AP flour, sifted

½ cup light brown sugar, packed

¼ cup granulated sugar

½ tsp kosher salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup milk

1 – 1 ½ cup frozen raspberries

Streusel Topping

½ cup light brown sugar

¾ cup oats

¼ cup flour

¼ cup butter, cubed

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

Pinch of cloves

Preheat oven to 400*.  Prepare the muffin tins with liners.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium size bowl.  Add the sugars.  In a measuring cup, add the oil, egg, milk (until it reaches the 1 cup mark), and vanilla.  Whisk and add to the dry ingredients.

In a small bowl, lightly coat the raspberries with flour and gently fold into the batter.  Portion out the batter to the top of each muffin cup.  Gently sprinkle on the crumb topping – DO NOT press.

To make the crumb topping:  combine all of the ingredients with a fork until the mixture resembles coarse sand. 

Bake for about 25 minutes – the crumb topping will get golden brown and the toothpick will be clean.