One of my favorite things to make with apples is this Italian yogurt-apple cake, featuring brown butter, yogurt, and grated apples to create this super tender cake crumb. That cake was inspired by an old episode of Top Chef, where it was referenced by a chef who substituted the apple for radish and made this gorgeous dessert from that. Ever since then, I have been making variations of that cake on and off for the past 8 years. Which is wild to think that I’ve been baking now for 15 years. Time does fly when you’re having fun, right? But while time is flying, I find myself not getting around to eating breakfast as often as I should be. So I figured, why not make a crumb cake-muffin-type of thing using a modified version of that batter, along with some freshly baked brown sugar streusel to add a nice crunch? I love doing crumb cake in general, since the streusel bits add a much welcome texture. And making that cake batter as a muffin would be a convenient baked good to make, and an easy thing to eat for breakfast while I am busy with my day. The end result were these soft yet crunchy muffins that I was obsessed with. My recipe only made 8 of these muffins, and they basically were gone by the second day of me making them. If you love anything cinnamon or apple, these are the perfect muffins for you, and they can be for you within 45 minutes!

For the streusel:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
a pinch of salt
a pinch of ground cinnamon
a pinch of ground nutmeg
2 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl, mix everything together to form a streusel dough. Bake the dough in small, fingernail-sized pieces on a lined sheet tray at 375 degrees F for 15 minutes. Allow the streusel to cool before using in the muffin batter.

For the apple-yogurt batter:
2 green apples, peeled and grated
1 stick unsalted butter, browned
4oz Greek yogurt
2 egg whites
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
a pinch of salt
a pinch of ground cinnamon
a pinch of ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder

Mix the green apple with brown butter and Greek yogurt and allow that mixture to sit for 10 minutes. In another bowl, whip the egg whites with dark brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla to stiff peaks. Sift the flour and baking powder into the apple-yogurt mixture, and fold into that the egg whites to form your batter. Either divide the batter into 8 lined cupcake liners, layering them up with the streusel, and bake at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes.