MSC Bonus- Applesauce Spice Cupcakes

I decided to do the Bonus recipe for MSC (Martha Stewart's Cupcakes Club) yesterday morning. I made 1/4 of the recipe and I got 6 cupcakes.
I would have to say these turned out more like muffins because I decided to use whole wheat flour and they already had applesauce in them.
I upped the spices and instead of adding toasted pecans at the end to the batter, I decided to add gingersnap cookie crumbs that were leftover from the Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake that I made for Thanksgiving.
I also skipped the frosting because I was going for a muffin type breakfast item. I just dusted them with a little bit of powdered sugar.
My sister was very happy about these cupcake/muffins and they did seem a healthier than a normal cupcake.

To see who else made this month's bonus cupcake, check out the MSC Blog. You can find the recipe on page 55 of Martha Stewart's Cupcakes or here, where they are called muffins :)

TWD- Allspice Crumb Muffins

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Allspice Crumb Muffins, is brought to us by Kayte who blogs over at Grandma's Kitchen Table.
You can find this recipe on her blog, as well as lots of other tasty treats and dishes. Kayte participates in lots of cooking/baking groups and feeds teenagers, so you always know you can find something delicious cooking in her kitchen!
These muffins were really easy to mix together and they smelled absolutely wonderful. I made a 1/2 recipe and cooked them in my jumbo muffin tin. I got 4 very large muffins- Dorie's muffin and cupcake recipes always seem to yield a lot of batter for me.
I had read that some people were have trouble with the "crumb" part of this muffin being too melty and buttery, so I reduced the amount of butter by 1/2 Tbls for my 1/2 recipe (that would be 1 Tbls if making the full recipe).
I made sure to follow Dorie's instructions to press the crumb mixture into the muffin batter and I didn't have any problems with my crumbs falling off or being too buttery. They turned out great.
I also replaced 2 Tbls of butter in the muffin batter with 2 Tbls fat-free greek yogurt (for 1/2 recipe, that would be 4 Tbls if making full recipe).

I was quite surprised that my husband really liked these. I gave him one when he was walking out the door to go to work, straight out of the oven and texted him later asking him what he thought and he said that he really, really enjoyed them.

My girls loved them. I gave them each 1/2 of a super-sized jumbo muffin and I'm not sure how much of the muffin they ate because the floor was covered with tons of crumbs, so they live up to their names. Ha ha. That is my attempt at a lame joke for the day. I really was thinking they should be called "crumbs" muffins when I saw the mess they had made.

Overall, I think that these muffins had great flavor and were exactly what you would expect from a tasty muffin. The lemon zest really complimented the allspice and overall flavor of these muffins.

Go check out the TWD Bakers Blogroll to see how the other Bakers fared this week!
One Year Ago-Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes