New York Style Crumb Cake Muffin Tops
This is my muffin top version of the Cook's Illustrated recipe for New York Style Crumb Cake. I designed the recipe to be used with two of the special pans, but if you want you can make one pan at a time or halve the recipe to just make 6.
Servings 12
Ingredients
Crumb Topping:
- 8 tablespoons 1 stick unsalted butter
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- ⅓ cup dark brown sugar
- ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon salt I used ⅛, but think ¼ would be better
- 1 ¾ cups cake flour 7 ounces
Cake
- 1 ¼ cups cake flour 5 ounces
- ½ cup granulated sugar 3 ½ ounces
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter cut up and softened
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅓ cup buttermilk
- Confectioners' sugar for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two muffin top pans.
- Make the crumb topping. In a microwave safe bowl or over the stove, melt the butter and allow it to cool slightly.
- Mix together both sugars, cinnamon, salt. Combine with melted butter until well blended, then add flour and stir to make a dough. Set aside while you make the cake batter.
- In a mixing bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Scatter butter pieces and stir with a rubber scraper until mixture is coarse and crumbly. If you have a stand mixer, you can do this with the paddle attachment. Add egg, yolk, vanilla, and buttermilk.
- Beat with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute, scraping bowl.
- Using generously heaping tablespoons, spoon batter into the greased muffin top pans dividing evenly. With the back of a spoon, smooth the batter evenly.
- Break apart crumb topping into marble and pea size bits and arrange bits over batter.
- Bake for 15 minutes or until crumbs are golden and edges are brown.
- Let cool in the pans for about 5 minutes, then carefully remove.
- Let cool completely on a wire rack, then sift confectioners' sugar over the muffin tops.
Notes
Grease the pans with whatever you feel comfortable with. I prefer shortening because it doesn't burn as easily as butter. Also, this recipe halves quite nicely. Rather than split an egg yolk and an a whole egg in half, just crack one egg into a bowl and use the yolk and about half the egg white.