Carrot Bran Muffins with Streusel Topping

This is a great recipe: Streusel Carrot Muffins from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain. It's a coffee cake disguised as muffins. But it has all the healthy breakfast stuff like lots of oat bran, whole grain flour, carrots and not so much sugar. That said, I couldn't leave the recipe alone.

I didn't have spelt flour. So I substituted with sorghum flour which I have left from way back when I experimented with gluten free baking. My carrots are tiny so I grated 4 of them. I got 2 cups and ended up using all of it. I didn't have allspice. So I upped the cinnamon and added a bit of cloves. I didn't want to melt butter. So I used oil. I didn't have buttermilk. So I substituted with soy milk and lemon juice.

The muffins came out moist, mildly spicy with sweet, buttery and crunchy streusel. I knew streusel was the key so I went all out - followed the recipe to the T (well - except I substituted whole wheat flour for spelt flour.) What a great idea to incorporate bran in the toppings. Here's what I ended up using:



Ingredients - adapted from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain

• 1 cup sorghum flour


• 3/4 cup all purpose flour


• 1/4 cup oat bran


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda


• 1 teaspoon salt


• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon


• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves


• 2 tablespoons light tasting olive oil


• 1/2 cup brown sugar


• 1 large egg


• 1 cup soy milk mixed with juice from 1 lemon


• 2 cups grated carrot

Streusel

• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour


• 2 tablespoons oat bran


• 3 tablespoons raw sugar


• A pinch of salt


• 3 tablespoons cold butter

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin pan with liners. (I didn't want a mess from all the crumbs when trying to extract the muffins from the pan. Normally I don't use liners with muffins.) I got 11 muffins from this recipe.


2. Combine sorghum flour, all purpose flour, oat bran, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and cloves in a large bowl.


3. In another clean bowl, whiks oil, sugar, egg and soy milk + lemon juice together. Add to the flour mixture. Add grated carrots. Fold the ingredients together until only a few streaks remain.


4. Spoon into the prepared muffin pan. Set aside.


5. Make the streusel. In a clean bowl, combine all the streusel ingredients. Rub everything together with fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over the batter.


6. Fill the empty space with water. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes. Remove from the pan and let cool on a cooling rack.