Blueberry Muffins with Crumb Topping

How to make jumbo blueberry muffins with crumb topping?

All you need is some flour, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, baking powder, and blueberries. With this foolproof 1-hour recipe, I will never buy any blueberry muffin from Starbucks.😁

How to Make the Crumb Topping?

The crumb topping takes less than 5 minutes to make, but can add extra sweetness and crunchiness to your blueberry muffins.

What’s more, blueberry muffins with crumb topping will definitely look more appetizing and bakery-style than those without the crumbs.

To make the crumb topping, you combine butter, all purpose flour, sugar, and cinnamon powder in a small bowl, then rub and mix with your hands until crumbly. 

• Butter: Room-temperature softened butter will be easier to be mixed with other ingredients. But I don’t want to spend more than 5 minutes on preparing the crumb topping, so I never plan ahead to soften the butter. Since we will only use a very small piece of butter to make the crumb topping, the temperature of our hands will soften the butter fast as we rub the butter into flour.
• All purpose flour works just fine. You can also use cake flour, which won’t make a big difference.
• Sugar: I used brown sugar, because I’d like my muffins to look more golden brown and taste less sweet. You can also use granulated sugar, which is sweeter than brown sugar. Or use 50% brown sugar and 50% granulated sugar.
• Cinnamon powder: I added a pinch of cinnamon powder (about 0.5g) to add a hint of warm and spicy flavor to the crumb topping. You can skip it, or substitute it with ground nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, or apple pie spice.

Here is my trick on how to make large pea-size crumbs:

After you have rubbed the butter into the flour, you would get some loose soil-like crumbs.

To make some large pea-size crumbs, you can grab a handful of the loose crumbs, squeeze them like a sponge, then gently break the dough into pea-size crumbs.

Keep the crumbs in the fridge until use to prevent them from melting and sticking together.

Frozen or Fresh blueberries for muffins

Both fresh and frozen blueberries taste the same to me in muffins.

Frozen blueberries‘ skins are more fragile, so they are more likely to burst and dye your muffins into purple when they are baked. Some people actually like their blueberry muffins to have some purple bursting marks.

I prefer smaller blueberries over larger ones for this recipe, because I don’t want my muffins to look overly crowded with the blueberries.

– How to prevent blueberries from sinking to the bottom of the cup?

Many recipes will suggest you to toss blueberries in flour before folding them into the batter.

I like to add the batter and blueberries separately. I’d scoop some batter to the bottom of each cup, add a layer of blueberries, cover them with a layer of batter, then blueberries … Repeat until I use all the batter and blueberries.

In this way the batter and blueberries can be evenly distributed.

Muffin pan and muffin liners

According to Elinor Klivans’s skip-a-space strategy, we should alternate the cups, by filling every second cup and leaving the others empty, to leave enough room for the muffins to grow and for the hot air to circulation.

So I’d always use a 12-cup muffin pan to make 6 giant muffins.

I have tried this recipe with reusable silicone muffin liners and parchment paper muffin liners. I absolutely prefer the silicone liners than the paper liners!

Muffins made in silicone muffin liners are more easily to be unmolded, and their bottoms are drier and smoother with a clear pattern.

• An extra trick for keeping your countertop clean: Line all the muffin cups with muffin liners.

Although this recipe only make 6 muffins, I’d suggest you to line all the muffin pan with 12 muffin liners.

In this way, we can easily sweep the crumb topping scattered on the muffin pan into the empty muffin liners, and take away the empty muffin liners to get a nice and clean muffin pan.

EQUIPMENT you will need:

• Muffin Pan (Nonstick, 12-cup)
• Muffin Liners (I used reusable silicone ones)
• Kitchen scale

INGREDIENTS  

Crumb Topping:

• 30 g all purpose flour
• 20 g brown sugar (or granulated sugar if you prefer the muffins to be sweeter)
• 18 g unsalted butter (No need to soften)
• 0.5 g cinnamon powder (Optional)

Blueberry Muffins:

• 112 g unsalted butter (1 stick)
• 80 g egg (About 2 small eggs, or 1½ extra large eggs)
• 150 g milk (Or plant based milk, such as soymilk, almond milk, or coconut milk.)
• 4 g vanilla extract (About 1 tsp. Optional)
• 250 g all purpose flour (Or cake flour for a fluffier texture)
• 80 g brown sugar (or granulated sugar if you prefer the muffins to be sweeter)
• 9 g baking powder
• 150 g blueberries (Fresh or frozen)

Step-by-step INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Add unsoftened butter, brown sugar, and all purpose flour to a small bowl. Mix with your hands until crumbly. (See pictures above for “how to make large pea-size crumbs”.) Cover the bowl with lid or food wrap, keep it in the refrigerator.

2. Wash and dry blueberries. You can pat the blueberries dry with paper towel, or let them air dry on a wire rack. Do not thaw the blueberries if you are going to use frozen ones.

3. Preheat oven to 350° F.

4. Add a stick of unsalted butter to a small bowl, microwave for 30 seconds, stir, then microwave for 15 seconds until it’s fully melted.

5. Crack 2 eggs to a small bowl, whisk until well combined. Weigh 80g egg liquid to a medium bowl, add milk, vanilla extract, and melted butter to the bowl, whisk until well combined.

6. Add all purpose flour, brown sugar, and baking powder to a large bowl, whisk until well combined.

7. Pour the egg milk mixture to the large bowl, fold and stir with a spatula until there is no dry flour in the bowl. Do not over mix.

8. Line a muffin pan with 12 muffin liners (paper or silicone). Scoop and evenly divide ⅓ of the batter to 6 of the muffin cups. Add 4 to 5 blueberries to each cup, gently press the blueberries into the batter.

9. Scoop and evenly divide another ⅓ of the batter to the 6 muffin cups. Add 4 to 5 blueberries to each cup, gently press the blueberries into the batter.

10. Scoop and evenly divide the rest of the ⅓ of the batter to the 6 muffin cups. Make sure you use up all the batter. Decorate 3 to 4 blueberries on the top surface of the batter.

11. Sprinkle the crumb topping over the surface of the batter.

12. Use a brush to sweep the crumb topping scattered on the muffin pan into the empty muffin liners. Remove the empty muffin liners.

13. Place the muffin pan on the upper third rack of the oven. Bake at 350° F for 30 minutes.

14. 30 minutes later, increase the oven temperature to 400° F, bake for 3 to 5 minutes until the crumb topping turns golden. Observe carefully at this step to prevent burning.

Storage:

• Keep cooled blueberry muffins in an airtight container. They can be stored at room temperature for up to 4 days, and in the freezer for up to 3 months.
• To reheat a frozen blueberry muffin, microwave an unwrapped muffin on HIGH for 30 to 45 seconds. No need to thaw.

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