Here's What You'll Need to Make Them

To make these fantastic apple streusel muffins you will need the following ingredients:

All-Purpose Flour. Needed for the muffins and the cinnamon streusel.

Baking Powder and Baking Soda. These trusted leavening agents give these apple warm muffins their lift and slightly domed tops. Make sure these babies haven't expired!

Spices. You'll need ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and salt for the muffins. For the cinnamon streusel—just the cinnamon.

I used Vietnamese (or Saigon) ground cinnamon from King Arthur Baking which I love because of its stronger, sweeter flavor. Regular ground cinnamon will work equally as well though!

Granulated Sugar. Needed for both the apple cinnamon streusel muffins and cinnamon streusel topping. You can use regular white granulated sugar or organic pure cane sugar.

Unsalted Butter. For the muffins, you'll need the butter to be melted. For the streusel, you'll need it to be cold and cubed.

I don't recommend using salted butter as a substitute because it's tough to tell exactly how much salt is added. If it's the only type of butter you have access to, then omit the salt listed in the recipe.

1 Large Egg. Yep, just one is needed—make sure it is at room temperature. This helps to make sure the ingredients are fully incorporated properly.

Buttermilk. Or you can use whole milk. If you would like to use a buttermilk substitute, visit my lemon blueberry streusel muffins recipe.

Vanilla Extract. Helps to round out the flavors in this apple cinnamon streusel muffins recipe. Pure vanilla extract is best.

1 Gala Apple. This should be cleaned, peeled, and diced into small chunks. You can also use a granny smith or mcintosh apple as a substitute.

Chopped Walnuts. This is an optional ingredient that can be added to the batter, to the top as a garnish, or left out entirely. Chopped pecans can also be used as a substitute.

Here's How to Make It!

Step 1 - Make the streusel topping. First whisk together the all-purpose flour, granulated sugar, and cinnamon. With either your clean hands or a fork, blend together with the unsalted butter until you have small streusel crumbles. Having a few big crumbles is perfectly fine too.

Step 2 - Peel and chop up the apple. Keep the apple chunks small so more can go into the muffins.

Step 3 - Whisk the dry ingredients together. Use either a medium- or large-size mixing bowl to whisk together the all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and salt. Fold in your chopped apples, and if you'd like, chopped walnuts. I sometimes choose to add them, other times, not.

Step 4 - Mix the wet ingredients together. Whisk together the egg, granulated sugar, melted butter, buttermilk, and vanilla extract. I whisk together the first 5 ingredients, then I add in the buttermilk and vanilla extract. You can use either whole milk or buttermilk. See the quick tips section below for additional buttermilk substitutions.

Add the dry ingredients mixture to the wet. Use a spatula for this step instead of a whisk, folding gently until the ingredients are just combined.

Scoop, garnish, then bake. I used my 3.4 tablespoon size cookie scoop to evenly distribute the batter into each muffin liner. I filled each one up to the top. Using standard muffin liners, this recipe yielded 8 muffins. If you use tulip-style liners, you can fill them up just a bit more, yielding 6 muffins.

Top with the cinnamon streusel topping and, if desired, any chopped walnuts (or pecans).

Bake for 8 minutes at 425ºF, then reduce to 350ºF and bake for an additional 12-15 minutes longer or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.