Delicious Apple Muffins

I made these muffins when Damon's parents were here last week. The original recipe is from allrecipes.com, but it called for vegetable oil - I changed that to applesauce because of my father-in-law's soy allergy. You can use either one. I actually got the recipe for the crumb topping from a comment someone left on the website. I think the topping makes these muffins about a million times better! :) This makes enough topping for probably 2-3 batches of muffins, so you can cut it down if you're not making that many.

Apple Muffins:

2 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 c. apple juice
1/3 c. applesauce
1 egg
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 c. apples - peeled, cored and finely diced

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease bottoms only of 12 muffin cups or line with baking cups.

In medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt; mix well. In a separate bowl, combine apple juice, applesauce and egg; blend well. Add dry ingredients all at once; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened (batter will be lumpy). Stir in chopped apples.

Fill cups 2/3 full and top with generous amount of crumb topping. Bake for 18-22 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool one minute before removing from pan.


Crumb topping:

1 c. instant oats
1 c. flour
1 c. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c. melted butter

Mix together until crumbly and sprinkle it on, baby.

Project Progress

Made a little progress the last couple days on my list of projects. Damon's parents are coming to visit today through Monday, to go to my graduation (and see the granddaughter, of course :)). They decided to come in spite of Damon's grandma falling and breaking her hip last night (Damon's dad has a lot of siblings that can be there to help her out). The poor lady has a lot of health issues already - we appreciate prayers for her and the family.

Anyway, I find that having family visit is great motivation for cleaning projects (I mean, who wants the people they love to visit and discover the apartment the way it usually looks, am I right?). So I got to work last night scrubbing my kitchen sink. It started out with some hard water scuzz that had been building up for awhile and now it's shiny and pretty again. I got a little carried away and scrubbed out under the stove burners and under Eva's high chair too. I think I overdid it a little; I'm kinda wiped out today, plus I still have the all-day "morning" sickness. Of course, Eva decided to wake up way too early today too. Today of all days, when I was planning to meet the other sweet girls from my senior seminar class for breakfast. Eva was quite the cranky-pants. Oh well.

I also started the project of looking for soy free recipes since Damon's dad is soy intolerant, but I couldn't really find anything good. Most of the recipes I found that claimed to be soy free called for vegetable oil or other stuff with soy. Hello, vegetable oil is soybean oil. Nice try, recipes. So while they're visiting, I'm planning on modifying a few recipes I already had to make them soy free, like the crock pot pineapple chicken and chicken corn chowder I posted awhile ago. I'm also planning on making apple muffins and oatmeal cake without vegetable oil. Yum.

It's a start! I should probably get back to cleaning before Damon's parents get here this afternoon. The rest of the week is going to be crazy busy with family, work and graduation!