Coffee Cake Muffins

  

For those mornings when coffee is life support.


Coffee Cake Muffins

slightly adapted from here

Makes 12

For the Muffins:
140g unsalted butter
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

2 1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup vanilla sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder mixed with 1 1/2 tablespoons warm water

For the Topping:
40g cold, unsalted butter, diced
1/2 cup plain flour
3 1/2 tablespoons vanilla sugar
1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line a muffin pan with paper liners.

Put the butter in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat.  Once melted, continue to cook the butter until it starts to turn nut brown and smells delicious.  Remove from the heat.

In another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, eggs and vanilla together.  Add the brown butter and whisk again.  Set aside.

In a separate bowl whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together. Add the buttermilk mixture and stir to combine.

Take half of the batter and spoon it into the prepared liners.  Dissolved the coffee powder into the water and add it to the remaining batter and stir.  Divide the espresso batter evenly between the liners, on top of the plain batter.

Make the Topping:
Put all the topping ingredients into a bowl and rub them together with your fingertips.  Sprinkle evenly over the batter in the liners.

Bake for about 18 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.  Leave to cool on a wire rack.