Karl’s Apple Oat Muffins

My wife Jan had a hunger for oat muffins/cookies. She sent me a recipe and I disagreed with almost everything about it—too much flour, oil, and sugar, not enough oats or cinnamon. While I very loosely based this on that recipe, I changed almost everything.

After Baking Note: Normally this would be an “after meal note,” but as soon as my wife and daughter came home three muffins just seemed to vanish. Enough said.

Karl’s Apple Oat Muffins

Ingredients

2 cups rolled oats, separate uses

1 cup AP flour, separate uses
¾ cup brown sugar, separate uses
3 tsp. cinnamon, separate uses
2 tsp. baking powder
¾ tsp nutmeg, separate uses
¼ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. Kosher salt

1 cup apple sauce (unsweetened preferred)
½ cup Greek yogurt
¼ cup milk (I used 2% lactose free)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 large eggs

3 Tbs. butter

Directions

Note: You want your apple sauce, yogurt, milk, eggs, and butter at room temperature. You may set them out before hand or what I do is to let them sit after I have mixed all of the wet ingredients together.

1. Put the rolled oats in a large sauté pan, over a medium heat, and toast until they are fairly browned, but not burnt, about 7-10 minutes.

Tip: Put the oats in a sieve and shake out the oat dust—this is easiest if you do it one cup at a time.

Note: If you simply dump the oats into the pan, the oat dust will burn very quickly and it will leave your muffins with a carbon taste. If you have a flake or two that burn, pick them out and discard them.

2. Let the oats cool and place one cup into a standing blender and process them into flour—2-3 minutes on high.

3. Put one half cup of the remaining oats and put them in a small bowl.

Tip: Several of the listed ingredients have separate uses—the rolled oats, flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and the butter at the end of the list—most of it is for the muffins and the remainders   going to go into the streusel topping.

Note: You will be working with three mixing bowls: one for the dry ingredients, one for the wet ingredients, and one for the streusel topping.

4. Put the oat flour into a large mixing bowl.

5. Add the remaining half cup of toasted oats and the rest of the dry ingredients—the sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt.

6. Whisk to blend thoroughly.

7. Whisk all of the wet ingredients—the apple sauce, yogurt, vanilla, and eggs—in a medium mixing bowl.

Tip: If you did not bring your ingredients to room temperature before you started, set the wet bowl aside for 15-20 minutes.

Note: The original recipe call for a lot of oil. Apple sauce does a good job of replacing the function of the oil in baked goods—keeping the gasses—produced by the baking powder and soda—from escaping.

8. Put the remaining flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and the butter into the small bowl with the remaining toasted oats.

9. Mix the streusel ingredients thoroughly together until it forms crumbly lumps.

10. Pre-heat the oven to 375º F and set the rack to the middle level.

11. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients.

12. Mix together until there is no dry flour.

Tip: This will form a fairly loose batter.

13. Pam a 12 cup (standard) muffin pan.

14. Spoon the batter into each cup.

Tip: You to not to fill the cups all the way up to the top. You want to save some room for the streusel topping.

15. Crumble the streusel topping evenly over each cup.

Tip: Gently pat the topping down to set it into the batter—or it will fall off after the muffin baked.

16. Let the pan sit on the counter for 10-15 minutes.

Tip: This wait time gives the chemical leaveners time to form the gas bubbles, which gives you a light and fluffy muffin.

17. Bake the muffins for 18-20 minutes, until well browned on top.

Tip: Rotate the pan half way through the baking time to ensure even cooking.

18. Transfer the muffins to a wire rack to cool.