Waking up to Muffins

Having two dogs is much like having two kids sometimes! Early weekend mornings I am reminded of this more and more. When you normally get up for work during the week between 5 or 5:30 or 6 or so, the dogs (or kids) think that is normal & also like to get up that time on weekend when you really want nothing more than to just lie in bed! Well, on a recent weekend (and actually again today which is why it is 7:45 am and I have already been up for over an hour – but I guess I should be thankful for that, they let us actually sleep in!) I decided to use my time wisely and whip up a batch of Apple Cinnamon muffins. I did some searching and stumbled across this great blog by Georgia (check it out if you get a chance) and found my winning recipe (which like all great cooks, she had changes & modified from other’s ideas).

The recipe is as follows:

Apple Cinnamon Muffins (makes 12)

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted

1 1/2 cups chopped, peeled tart apples

TOPPING:

1/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons cold butter or margarine

Directions

* Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

* In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. In another bowl, beat the eggs, sour cream and butter. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in apples.

* Spray paper muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray and fill cups to the top. ( I skipped the “spraying cups” part since I was using paper & it didn’t need it with paper, without paper it would have though)

* For topping, combine sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle a rounded teaspoonful over each muffin. (I hate making crumbs – mine was still “flour-y” and was just fine)

* Bake for 20-23 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks. Serve warm.

SO – these muffins were about 1/2 done as Rich blearily came down the stairs so he got some hot out of the oven (after allowing me to snap a photo or 2 as they cooled). The sour cream in these muffins was an amazing (and healthy) change to some other muffin recipes that I have used. I also cut my apples to different sizes so some almost disappeared & others gave you a nice big chunk. When this gets made again, I think I will add some more cinnamon since I love that flavor in these muffins! Then my dad came over to enjoy some. Well, Dad actually came over to help build stairs & I just happened to have yummy food – but it was all worth it because by the end of the day we had stairs from the porch to the fenced in area of the yard to let the said dog/children out, everyone enjoyed muffins, & I was all ready to bring in some snacks to the secretaries at school! 🙂