Blueberry Streusel Muffin Recipe

I love the blueberry muffins they have in Starbucks so I started looking for a similar recipe online a while back. Although there were a few hits and misses, nothing really looked compelling. Then the search turned to other things and I promptly forgot about the blueberries I had bought and frozen to make muffins.

But you can't really forget about blueberry muffins for long, can you? I resumed my search for a good blueberry muffin recipe a couple of weekends back and found a recipe for something better - blueberry streusel muffins! I have been wanting to make streusel something for a while now so here it goes!

Blueberry Streusel Muffins Recipe
Makes 8 large muffins
Adapted from All Recipes

Ingredients

For Muffins:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour or maida
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil)
1 egg
1/3 cup milk, approx
3/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

For Streusel Topping:
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, cubed
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

How I Made It:

1. Preheat oven to 400F / 200C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners and set aside.

2. For muffin batter - combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl with a whisk or fork

3. Place vegetable oil in a 1 cup measuring cup, add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture gently until no traces of the flour mixture remain.

4. Fold in the blueberries without breaking them. Its helps to refrigerate or freeze them for a bit before this step. If the blueberries break, they will bleed all over the batter, making your cupcakes purple. Unless that's the colour you want to end up with, freeze the blueberries and harden them a bit. Either ways, taste is not affected.

5. Fill muffin cups almost to the top. This gives a more domed muffins as you get in malls and bakeries. The streusel topping will make sure the batter doesn't spill over while baking.

6. To Make Streusel Topping: Combine the ingredients with your fingertips until they resemble bread crumbs (the mixture will be more moist than bread crumbs though). Sprinkle over the muffin batter and cover as completely as possible.

7. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the muffins pass the skewer test (insert skewer or toothpick into the muffin and if they come out with some dry crumbs at the end, you are done).

The muffins were airy, large, domed, and delicious. I also added some almond extract to the second batch but the ones without that were nicer so omit any flavouring that you feel tempted to add, like vanilla or almond.

I promised I will give an option to make these eggless so to make eggless blueberry streusel muffins, replace the egg with 1/2 cup yogurt or add 2 tbsp flax seed meal mixed in with 1/4 cup warm water. I haven't tried these egg substitutes for this recipe but have tried them in other muffin recipes and they work like a charm!