[PUMPKIN] CARDAMOM CRUMB MUFFINS
I didn’t make the pumpkin muffins in the recipe, but I was making some muffins with end-of-season farmers’ market peaches (yes, it’s late October, but we’re lucky that way here in NorCal) and supermarket organic blackberries, and decided I wanted a streusel topping when this recipe drifted across my radar. Cardamom is always a good choice in my book, so I went with it (sort of). Reading the reviews, it was frequently noted that the streusel has too much butter for the volume of other ingredients, and that it’s much more than you need for a dozen muffins. Since I was making a larger batch, these were my riffs: I kept the amounts of flour and brown sugar the same, added 100g of unblanched almond meal and another 2T butter, left out the cinnamon and used a heaping teaspoon of ground cardamom and a lesser amount of nutmeg. I popped the bowl in the fridge while I went about other business, then used a fork to break the chilled mixture into smaller clumps/sandy texture.
Conclusions: I baked my muffins at 375F, and ended up turning on convection for the last 5 minutes or so of the ~20-minute bake to get the streusel a little more golden. Once cooled, the streusel has a nice crispness at the top, and provides a sweet foil to my not-that-sweet muffins. With my changes, the streusel was still plenty sweet enough, and had a good amount of butter for the volume of dry ingredients. With a nice crown on each of the 21 muffins, but not a pile (no loose bits once baked), I still had about 1/3 cup left over (now stashed in my freezer). So if you use this recipe, I’d recommend halving it for a dozen muffins unless you like a big pile of crumb topping, and cutting back the butter a bit and possibly the brown sugar. I have my own favorite pumpkin muffin/bread recipe, but this one is highly rated overall.
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