Sarah's Cran-Crumble Muffins

Now that my daughter Sarah is older, I really love working with her in the kitchen to learn different cooking and baking skills. She makes wonderful Snickerdoodles, and has helped whip up various mixes for us many times. So today we thought we would work on homemade muffins. When a homemaker masters a basic quick bread, you can whip up great breads, coffee cakes, and muffins anytime, very quickly, and often without a recipe. I asked her what type of muffin sounded good to her, and she said she wanted to make a crumble topped muffin with cranberries. So we pulled ideas from a few different classic muffin recipes, and came up with- Sarah's Cran-Crumble Muffins. She baked up a batch, and was able to bring them along to share with her grandparents. They are very tasty. Here is the recipe.

Sarah's Cran-Crumble Muffins

Pre-heat oven to 375 F.

Crumble Topping (make first, and set aside)

Combine - 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup sugar, 3/4 cup flour, 1Tablespoon of cinnamon. Stir until combined.

In a small saucepan heat just to boiling- 1/4 cup orange juice and 1 cup of cranberries- as soon as it is hot enough remove from heat, and set aside.

In another small bowl combine 1 1/2 cups Kellogg's All-Bran and 1 1/4 cups of milk- let stand for 5 minutes- (we like the basic All-Bran Muffin recipe as well, and incorporate it into a lot of our muffins)

In a large bowl combine 2 eggs, 1/4 cup vegetable oil, 1/2 cup sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla, and the soaked cereal and milk mixture- mix until well combined. The add 1 1/4 cups of flour along with 1 Tablespoon of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the wet mixture, and mix until combined. The add orange juice and cranberry mixture, and mix until combined.

Spray muffin pan with pan spray or line muffin tin with cupcake papers, and fill muffin cups two-thirds full. Then top muffins with a good layer of crumble topping. This mix made a little more than 12 muffin cups full so we baked the rest in a tiny custard dish. Bake at 375 F. for 20-25 minutes.

It was very fun working with Sarah, I think it is so important to pass along these homemaking skills to our daughters. Joseph enjoyed sneaking a few bits of crumble while his sister finished up the muffins. The whole house smells wonderful. Hope everyone can enjoy baking with their children.