Pumpkin Streusel Muffins
Soft and deliciously spiced pumpkin muffins made with a brown butter base and topped with a spiced crispy brown sugar streusel topping. Optional: add a spiced cream cheese filling to the muffins.
There is something about pumpkin season that begs the puree makes its way into everything: pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, pumpkin bagels and donuts and cookies and… muffins. Specifically pumpkin muffins with streusel.
This is a stellar pumpkin muffin recipe on its own but I wanted to give you some options to really take it home. The goal was a recipe that could be easily made but when finished looked like it was a treat you’d buy from an artisanal bakery. Let me know if I’ve succeeded!
Recipe Origins
While I initially tried to use my oat flour pumpkin muffin recipe as a base for this, there was just too much in that recipe that was formulated around the oat flour for it to work with a basic pumpkin muffin recipe. So instead, I looked at a few pumpkin bread recipes which tend to be quite similar and swapped in some of my own changes: browning the butter (so we don’t have an ‘overly’ moist muffin), blooming the spices to accentuate their flavor, and using some sour cream as the added fat gives better texture.
Then of course, I dressed them up in streusel: spiced and made with brown sugar so you get a double dose of those lovely fall spices. And if you like, a surprise inside in the form of a glob of cheesecake.
Recipe Ingredients
Butter: unsalted butter, if using salted butter halve the amount listed in the recipe.
Pumpkin spices: you can either use a storebought mix of pumpkin spice or make your own.
Salt: fine sea salt. If using table salt, use half the amount.
Vanilla: pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste.
Eggs: whole large eggs.
Pumpkin puree: canned. You can make your own if you like, just try to drain it from some of the excess water that comes with a diy puree.
Flour: all purpose flour of a medium protein content. If you’d like to make the muffins gluten free use a one to one substitute.
Sour cream: full fat. Can be substituted with full fat greek yogurt.
Sugar: brown sugar for the muffin batter and for the streusel. You can use brown sugar for the cream cheese filling as well, or you can use fine granulated sugar.
Cream cheese: this is for the optional spiced cream cheese filling. Use full fat.
How to make Pumpkin Streusel Muffins
Brown the butter: set it in a pan and cook until the milk solids separate then turn a medium brown color.
Bloom the spices: when you add spices to something hot they ‘bloom’ and their flavors intensify. While the butter is still hot, we’ll add our pumpkin spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and clove and/or cardamom). Then let it cool.
Make the batter
Whisk in the sugar: once the butter is cooled, add the sugar and whisk well.
Crack in the eggs: whisk very, very well – you’ll see the mixture transform from separated and grainy to thick and shiny.
Whisk in the sour cream & pumpkin puree.
Whisk in the flour & leavening. If your flour is lumpy, sift it in. Stop whisking as soon as there are no visible flour bits so you don’t overdo it and toughen the gluten.
Make the streusel
Whisk the dry ingredients: the sugar, spices, salt and flour.
Cut in the butter: dice the butter so you have smaller bits then work it in by hand until its in tiny bits (like half a pea size). I’ve found that the best way to make a good streusel is by hand, with a machine you risk overmixing in the butter and then rather than coating the dry ingredients it gets too soft and mixes in. If you have something like a paste, you’ve overdone it.
Let the streusel chill for a bit.
Bake
Prep the trays: to every other muffin cup add a muffin liner. Leaving room between the muffins allows the heat to circulate better, and stops the streusel from causing sticking between the muffins.
Fill the muffin cups: halfway if you are going to do the cream cheese filling or ¾ of the way full if you aren’t.
Top with the cold streusel: be generous with your topping, the muffins will rise and spread and you want as much streusel as possible!
Bake: until a cake tester comes out clean or the tops of the muffins bounce back when pressed.
Optional: Spiced Cream Cheese Filling
If you’d like something reminiscent of cheesecake parked in the middle, surrounded by a fluffy pumpkin cake then this one is for you: you’ll bring some cream cheese to room temperature then beat it with sugar and spices.
Once you’ve prepped the oven and pans, fill the muffin cups only half way and then add a heaping tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture. Add more muffin batter on top then proceed to top the muffins with the streusel and bake them.
Can I make this muffin batter ahead of time?
Yep! Once you’ve made the batter and the streusel set them both in the fridge, covered. You can bake them a few hours later or the next morning.
Pumpkin Streusel Muffins Recipe
Pumpkin Streusel Muffins
Ingredients
Brown Butter Pumpkin Muffins
- 113g or ½ cup butter unsalted
- 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
- ½ tsp fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 150g or ¾ cup brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 200g pumpkin puree half a can
- 60g or ¼ cup sour cream full fat or greek yogurt
- 160g or 1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder double acting
- ½ tsp baking soda
Streusel
- 70g or ½ cup all purpose flour
- 50g or ¼ cup brown sugar
- 57g or ¼ cup butter softened
- 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- Pinch fine sea salt
Optional: Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese Filling
- 226g or 1 brick cream cheese at room temperature
- 100g or ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- Pinch fine sea salt
Method
- This muffin batter can be made the night before baking, or can be baked right away.
- Brown the butter
- Set the butter in a small pan over medium heat. Cook as the butter melts, then foams and sputters. You’ll start to see tiny cream colored bits at the bottom, stir so the butter browns evenly, and cook until those bits turn medium brown. Once all of them have browned and the butter smells nutty, immediately transfer the butter to a heatproof bowl - making sure to scrape down every bit from the pan.
- Make the batter
- Add the spices, salt and vanilla to the butter and stir. Leave to cool, at least 10 minutes.
- Add the sugar and whisk very well, for at least 30 seconds. Crack in the eggs and whisk until the mixture is light and creamy. Add the pumpkin puree and sour cream and whisk to combine.
- Add the flour and baking powder and soda and whisk to just combine. You have the option to proceed immediately or you can cover the bowl with plastic wrap to seal and bake it the next morning.
- Make the streusel
- Whisk together the dry ingredients (the flour, sugar, spices and salt) then slice the butter into tiny pieces over it. Using your fingers, work the butter into the flour so that it coats all of the flour. When you can squeeze the mix together and it clumps, it’s likely done mixing. Press it into the bowl. You can set it in the fridge to chill now if you aren’t using it right away.
- When you’re ready to bake
- Preheat the oven to 400 F. Line every other muffin cup with a muffin liner. Scoop the muffin batter into the cups, filling them ¾ full. Generously add the streusel on top, packing it onto the muffin batter.
- Set the tins in the oven and immediately lower the temperature to 350 F. Bake the muffins until the middle tops spring back or a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, for about 20 minutes
Notes
Did you make this recipe?
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these are gorgeous, flavours and texture all around :]! i usually always make streusel according to my mum’s recipe of 1pt flour 1/2p sugar 1/2pt butter (melting after measure), but here i stuck with the recipe and my streusel kind of melted instead of being crumbly ,, is that intended?
it melted into the muffin right? Yeah mine kind of does too, you can see in the photos. If you have a preferred recipe, use that instead =)
Made these this AM, so yummy, perfect blend of spices and pumpkin. I made the streusel last night and put it into the refrigerator. Doing that gave me the best streusel results I have ever had! Will definitely make these again. Thank you.
Yummmmm!!meeeee!!!!!