My son asked me this morning, "Hey, what's that crumbly cinnamon stuff you put on top of muffins? Make that, like, all the time." Streusel! Yes! We are a family obsessed with streusel. When I was a little girl, I asked my mom if she could make a whole pan of just streusel, skipping the coffee cake part. (She said no.) When my sister was in the early days of a modeling career, her then-boyfriend baked a streusel coffee cake for her and was shocked to discover she'd eaten the entire thing while he was away at work. Two sticks of butter plus a cup of sour cream, strutting down the runway - nice!
If your family also swoons over cinnamon-brown sugar-butteriness, baking the coffee cake as individual muffins is one way to encourage sharing. We're big fans of the little Buddha coffee cakes at Lucia's, which gild the lily with a drizzle of icing, so I do the same. You could skip that step, though, and enjoy the muffins as is, preferably warm, with a cup of coffee, on a tray with a little bouquet of flowers, served to you in bed by a seriously cute kid (or two, or more).
Happy Mother's Day!
Recipe for Cinnamon Streusel Muffins at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.
We filled out the rest of the meal with good ol' (lowfat) Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage (brown it on a parchment-lined baking sheet in the oven for no mess, no fuss), fresh fruit, and Baby Buddhas (streusel coffee cakes) from Lucia's. A little sweet, a little salty, none of it too rich, that's my kind of brunch.
