In the midst of my crazy meal prep madness getting ready for Mia’s arrival, I had bought a big carton of buttermilk to use in an Ina Garten chicken recipe, as well as a batch of Bran Muffins and still had a good amount leftover. I wanted to add another type of freezer-friendly breakfast food to my Babygeddon stash, and saw this recipe that also uses buttermilk on Smitten Kitchen. They are SO good!
Whole Wheat Apple Muffins
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed, divided
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- 1 cup buttermilk or yogurt
- 2 large apples, peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped (I used Granny Smith)
DIRECTIONS:
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Grease and flour 18 muffin cups and set aside.
- Mix together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon, and set aside. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and add the granulated sugar and 1/4 cup of the brown sugar. Beat until fluffy. Add the egg and mix well; stop once to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.Mix in the buttermilk gently. (If you over-mix, the buttermilk will cause the mixture to curdle.) Stir in the dry ingredients and fold in the apple chunks.
Don’t Overmix! - Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, sprinkling the remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar on top. Bake for 10 minutes, turn the heat down to 400°F, and bake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool the muffins for 5 minutes in the tin, then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
For a muffin that uses wheat flour instead of all-purpose, this sure was moist! It had more of a cake-like texture than I was expecting it to have. I went easy on the sugar for the crunchy top (probably only 1 TBSP brown sugar instead of the 1/4 cup the recipe calls for).
As with all of my food prep as of late, being able to freeze what we weren’t going to eat immediately was important. These freeze really well, though I would skip adding the brown sugar on top since the crunchy top texture goes away once you microwave it. YUM!
