Tender Butter Apple Pie Muffins with Cinnamon Crumb Topping

Every fall it seems like I go on a full-on apple bender, putting them in everything I can think of. This fall is no different. But once I’ve stocked up on homemade applesauce, apple pies, and tartlets galore, what I want is a sweet, lightly spiced, apple-rich breakfast, and these apple muffins fit the bill. Sprinkled with tart apple pieces and topped with a cinnamon-spiked crumble, these tender muffins offer all the flavor of apple pie wrapped in a muffin. They’re also great as an impressive Sunday brunch for guests or served with a hot cup of coffee as an afternoon snack.

It’s a simple idea – muffins with a bright apple flavor – but it can be surprisingly difficult to pull off. Versions often lack assertive apple flavor or have a gummy, dense texture from excess moisture in the apples. Lucky for us, our Birmingham, Alabama-based test kitchen colleague Tricia Manzanero Stuedeman baked batch after batch of muffins to develop this recipe, which uses several tricks to maximize apple flavor and produce the ideal moist and tender texture.

The key to creating big apple flavor in a tender muffin starts with the apples themselves. We recommend using two types of apples for optimal flavor and texture: one sweet, like Honeycrisp, and one tart, like Granny Smith.

Another key to the flavor of large apples is the technique used to cook the apples. In her testing, Tricia found that sautéing chopped apples in butter with brown sugar and cinnamon concentrated the flavor and evaporated excess moisture that would have made the muffins soggy and gummy if she had simply thrown raw apples into the batter.

Once cooked and cooled, the apples are incorporated into a dough enhanced with apple cider and sour cream. The apple cider amplifies the sweet apple flavor in the muffins and the acidic sour cream activates the baking soda in the muffins to produce a tender texture. Both ingredients also add a welcome tangy flavor that pairs well with the apples and cinnamon.

To give these muffins a classic apple pie flavor, Tricia turned to the spice cabinet, but the spice she chose might surprise you: Instead of using apple pie spice, she incorporates pumpkin pie spice, which, she explains, often contains more spices than its apple pie counterpart, so she finds its taste more balanced and robust. In addition to the spices in the batter, each muffin is streaked with a cinnamon sugar mixture and topped with a buttery oat crumble that creates a welcome contrast of textures and flavors in every bite. The finishing touch is a simple glaze, which is just the butter mixture left over from baking the apples – it’s as simple as pie and just as delicious.