Oat Muffins with Brown Sugar Pecan Crumble
These delicious Oat Muffins have tons of oat flavor, with oat flour in the batter and an oaty cinnamon streusel topping. This is one of my favorite baking recipes!
Would you say you’re someone who always sticks to the recipe, or someone who likes to experiment with a completely new ingredient and see what happens?
Odds are you’ve got a little bit of both in you. Lately I’ve been getting more of the “let’s experiment” fever because it seems that every time I go to the grocery store, there are more and more shelves exploding with weird/cool flours of all kinds: hazelnut, spelt, garbanzo, oat, sorghum, coconut, and zillions of others.
Have you ever tried baking with these unusual flours? If not, let me introduce you to some oat flour. The first question you may have is, what’s the point to using oat flour?
Oat flour gives an incredible flavor to these muffins. And these are incredibly moist. This is important to me, and is true of every muffin recipe on this site, from Zucchini Muffins, Chocolate Muffins to Blueberry Muffins to Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins.
Today’s recipe is adapted from an article I read in Cook’s Illustrated magazine. When the cook was developing the recipe, her initial batch lacked the oaty flavor she wanted.
So she browned oats in a pan and broke it down into a flour with the food processor, and voila! Rich flavorful muffins.
I changed the recipe up a bit, because I find that the food processor just can’t grind the oats finely enough to give as good of a texture as a storebought oat flour can.
Oh, and I also made a “Joanne amount” of the brown sugar pecan crumble topping.
Translation: I’m greedy for topping. And I assume you are too.
When you’re making any kind of muffin, it’s oh so important to make sure you don’t overstir!
The muffin batter should be lumpy.
The below photo makes the batter look less lumpy than it really is because of the reflections from the light, but trust me, it’s got lumps.
The problem with overstirring is it makes the muffins tough from gluten development.
Before you go, tell me in the comments section…have you baked with any cool flours before? What have you made? What are some of your favorite flours?
Oat Muffins with Brown Sugar Pecan Crumble
Ingredients
For the Topping:
- 1/4 cup old fashioned oats
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1/4 cup pecans finely chopped
- 3 tbsp packed brown sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp melted butter
For the muffins:
- 3 oz oat flour about 2/3 cup, (I used Bob's Red Mill)
- 4.5 oz all purpose flour, by weight (slightly less than 1 cup measured)
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/8 tsp baking soda
- 4 tbsp melted butter
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 7/8 cup milk
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, and prepare a muffin tin with 6-7 cupcake papers in it.
- Start by making the topping. In a small bowl, stir to combine the oats, flour, pecans, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Drizzle over the melted butter and stir everything around until the ingredients start to clump up and form into a crumble. Set this crumble mixture aside for later.
- To make the muffin batter, sift to combine the oat flour, all purpose flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Oat flour tends to have lumps in it, and sifting will break them up. Set that aside. In another bowl, whisk to combine the melted butter, brown sugar, milk, and egg until smooth. Add half of the oat flour mixture to the wet ingredients, and stir gently. Add the rest of the oat mixture and stir until there aren’t any more streaks of flour, but there are still plenty of lumps.
- Portion the muffin batter into the muffin tins using a cookie scoop, and fill them nearly all the way. Sprinkle the brown sugar pecan crumble on top and bake the muffins for 22-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Try not to overbake the muffins. Let the muffins cool on a wire rack, and enjoy!
Nutrition
Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.
27 Comments on “Oat Muffins with Brown Sugar Pecan Crumble”
These muffins were simple and easy to make, tasting just as good (if not better) than a coffee shop one. I put one in the freezer (research purposes) but thawing this one is not the same as with a cookie, so be warned. But for same day or 3 days after (if they last) are perfect when warmed. I liked mine better from conventional oven, but you do you. Thanks for the recipe share!
Thanks for the feedback Jackie! Im glad you are enjoying them!