Apple Spice Muffins

This is what we all (except Ethan who wanted another breakfast burrito) had for breakfast this morning with a banana and a glass of milk.

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/4 cup butter

1 1/4 cups brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 T plus 1 1/2 tsp powdered milk

1/2 cup water

2 1/2 cups shredded apple

Topping:

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Coat the top and sides of muffin pans with cooking spray, or use liners. 

In a large bowl, cream together the applesauce, butter, brown sugar, vanilla and salt until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix together the flours, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir into the egg mixture. Reconstitute the powdered milk with 1/2 cup of water, and mix into the batter. Fold in apples. Scoop into muffin cups to fill about 3/4 full.

To make the crumble topping, in a small bowl, combine sugar, flours, cinnamon, and butter. If you are lucky enough to have one, use a pastry blender, otherwise use two butter knives to mix the crumble together until it looks like little peas. Sprinkle on top of the muffins

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes for jumbo muffins, and 25 for regular muffins. Remove from bans to cool.

This is a recipe that I found years ago and then modified to give it a little more flavor or color, make it healthier and make it cheaper. If you don't want to use applesauce, you can use a full 1/2 cup of butter. This was the first time I'd ever used the whole wheat flour in it. My family is used to eating whole wheat bread, but not used to eating whole wheat flour in other baked goods so I want to get them used to it slowly, so I substituted just part of the regular flour for whole wheat. You can do all all-purpose flour or all whole wheat flour. The 1/2 tsp of nutmeg was my own addition because I love nutmeg! We use powdered milk when cooking if a recipe calls for milk. We drink regular 1% milk because we can't stand the taste of powdered milk just to drink it. But then, we don't like the taste of skim milk either, which is what it's supposed to reconstitute to. But using powdered milk in oatmeal, muffins, and other recipes saves us a ton of money. As a family of five, we go through a lot of milk just by drinking it and pouring it over cereal alone! The original recipe only calls for 2 cups of apples, peeled, cored, and sliced. I wanted more apple flavor than that so I upped it to 2 1/2 cups. Then one day when I was making these I got lazy and decided just shredding them would be a lot faster and easier (this was my pre-apple slicer days). So, I left the skins on, and shredded away. I liked it a lot better and continue to do it this way. By shredding them, you don't get big chunks of skin, but still enough to add some extra fiber. The original recipe calls for 1/2 cup of walnuts, but they burn Corey's tongue, so we leave out the nuts. Sometimes we'll add pecans if we have them in the house since walnuts are the only nut Corey seems to have issues with.

Also, last night when I went to put in the brown sugar, I discovered that when I went to Target with Johnathan yesterday, I somehow didn't end up coming home with the brown sugar I had planned on buying since we were completely out. I checked my receipt and I must have put it down before getting up to the front to pay because it isn't on there. So, what do you do when you want brown sugar in a recipe but don't have it? You add 2 tablespoons of molasses to 1 cup of white sugar.