Why It Works
- Sautéing the chopped apples in butter with brown sugar and cinnamon concentrates the sweet apple flavor and evaporates excess moisture, preventing the muffins from turning wet and gummy.
- A combination of sour cream and apple cider in the batter enhances the muffin’s bright apple flavor.
- Layering a cinnamon-sugar mixture into the muffins and topping them with a crumbly oat mixture creates a welcome contrast of textures in each bite.
Every fall I seem to go on an all-out apple bender, putting them in everything and anything I can think of. This fall is no different. But once I’ve had my fill of homemade applesauce, apple pies, and tarts galore, what I want is a lightly spiced, apple-heavy breakfast sweet, and these apple muffins fit the bill perfectly. Studded with sweet-tart apple pieces and topped with a cinnamon-spiked crumble, these tender muffins deliver all the flavor of an apple pie packed into a muffin. They’re equally great as an impressive Sunday brunch treat for guests or served alongside a hot cup of coffee as an afternoon snack.
It’s a simple idea—muffins with bright apple flavor—but it can be surprisingly hard to get right. Versions often lack assertive apple flavor, or have a gummy and dense texture from excess moisture from the apples. Lucky for us, our Birmingham, Alabama-based test kitchen colleague Tricia Manzanero Stuedeman baked batch after batch of muffins to develop this recipe, which employs several tricks to maximize apple flavor and produce the ideal moist and tender texture.
Serious Eats / Robby Lozano
The key to building big apple flavor in a tender muffin starts with the apples themselves. We recommend using two types of apple for the best flavor and texture—one sweet, such as Honeycrisp, and one tart, such as Granny Smith.
Another key to big apple flavor lies in the technique used to cook the apples. In her testing, Tricia found that sautéing chopped apples in butter with brown sugar and cinnamon concentrated the flavor and evaporated the excess moisture that would have made the muffins wet and gummy if she simply tossed raw apples into the batter.
Once cooked and cooled the apples are folded into a batter that’s enhanced with apple cider and sour cream. The apple cider amplifies the sweet apple flavor in the muffins and the acidic sour cream activates the baking soda in the muffins to produce a tender texture—both ingredients also add a welcome tangy flavor that pairs well with the apples and cinnamon.
Serious Eats / Robby Lozano
To give these muffins a classic apple pie flavor, Tricia turned to the spice cabinet, but the spice she picked might surprise you: Instead of using apple pie spice, she incorporates pumpkin pie spice, which she explains often includes more spices than its apple pie spice counterpart, so she finds it tastes more balanced and robust. In addition to the spice in the batter, each muffin is striated with a cinnamon sugar mixture and topped with a buttery oat crumble that creates a welcome contrast of textures and flavors in every bite. The final flourish is a simple glaze, which is just the leftover butter mixture from cooking the apples—it’s as easy as pie, and just as delicious.
This recipe was developed by Tricia Manzanero Stuedeman; The headnote was written by Leah Colins. This recipe was originally published in November 2024.
