Fresh apples flavored with cinnamon make perfectly moist and delicious muffins just in time for autumn breakfasts and lunch pack-ins.
Apple Cinnamon Muffins
By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime
My recipe of the day is for Apple Cinnamon Muffins, which I am posting with the #MuffinMonday blogging group.
Now that August nears its end, the early signs of autumn begin to show themselves, and among these are the abundant harvest of apples, which has begun.
I spent part of the weekend driving up to Dayton to go to some of my more favorite orchards. I was saddened to see that Hidden Valley has been sold and converted to a restaurant and bar. It has gone from country farmstand to millenial gathering place in one summer.
I did get to Irons Fruit farm in Lebanon. They are still going strong, although the weekend seemed slow. But the bulk of apple picking lies in the coming weeks.
Apples that are in season right now
I ended up purchasing three types of apples: Ginger gold, Gala, and one I’ve not seen before called Blondies.
It is the blondies I decided to go with in the muffins. If you haven’t tried this varietal yet, it has the same golden color of a golden delicious, which is one of the better apples for making pies. The texture is very firm and mildly tart, much like Granny Smith apples but not quite as astringent as those.
I find with less astringency this apple will be perfect in baking, especially if paired with a blend of spicy and sweet apples.
I like the idea of using apples instead of applesauce in muffins- the apples make it very moist.
However, instead of dicing the apples, I opted to grate them on a box grater. Reason being that chunky apples will tend to sink somewhat in batter, and the moisture is not evenly distributed, but being moist in one spot and less so in another.
With the grated apples, they are moist throughout, without being heavy.
- Apple Cinnamon Muffins from Palatable Pastime
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- Chocolate Chip Sourdough Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
- Rum Raisin Banana Muffins from Food Lust People Love
#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.
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Apple Cinnamon Muffins
Ingredients
Muffin Ingredients:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- 1-1/2 cups grated Blondie Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apples
- 1/2 cup cooled melted butter
- 1/2 cup lowfat buttermilk
- 2 large eggs lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Icing Drizzle:
- 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon apple cider apple juice, or milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a mixing bowl.
- Grate peeled, cored apples on a box grater or use the grating attachment on a food processor.
- Stir grated apples together with the melted butter, beaten egg, buttermilk, and vanilla.
- Stir wet mixture into the sifted flour mix and stir just until blended. Do not overmix.
- Grease 2 muffin pans (15 cavities) or spray with baker's release spray and divide batter into them.
- Bake muffins for 21-23 minutes or until a toothpick inserted, can be removed without wet batter.
- Cool in the pan ten minutes, then turn out and finish cooling on a wire rack.
- Stir together the icing and drizzle over the cooled muffins, allowing the icing to set up and dry completely before storing in an airtight container.
Notes
Great idea to grate the muffins for this recipe which sounds delicious.
They are evenly moist. Not too much work to grate one up either. You’d like these!
I am so jealous of all your many varieties of apple, Sue. Maybe this fall I need to make a trip north. Your apple cinnamon muffins look perfect, especially with that sweet cinnamon drizzle!
Time might be running out on some of these places. I think the next gen of their families are declining to take up the business. We do have a great many orchards around here- but while the Johnny Appleseed thing accounts for the basis of it, most orchards date back only to about 1900.Johnny Appleseed wasn’t very virtuous- he did not drop appleseeds while prancing about so we could all have pies. Back in the days when they were settling Ohio, one of the things the government demanded was to be able to make a crop on the acreage. So being the entrepreneur, this guy was planting trees to make the properties farm-turnkey. And in those days they didn’t care about what we baked with. They liked having the types more suitable for making hard cider as they were used to in Europe. I think I read that one of the original apple cultivars might be around somewhere (or at least a derivative of the original cider apple) but all those trees and the apple types as well are gone. The Blondie is a new one to me- if you see it anywhere, grab it. It will be superior to the Granny while having some of the same textural character plus a bit of the tart bite. Hard and firm, not mealy whatsoever like the McIntosh.
Blondies are totally new to me too. I wonder if they will make it out here to California. Your muffins look fabulous with that cinnamon topping.
These sound delicious! I love your tip on grating the apples instead of dicing them. I’ll have to try these!