Struesel-Topped Spice Cake Muffins

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground mace (optional)**
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon***
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup light corn syrup
• Struesel Topping:
  
  • 2 tbsp flour
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
2. Prepare the streusel topping. Using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the cinnamon, flour, and sugar until it resembles cornmeal. Toss in the nuts. Set aside.
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices.
4. In another mixing bowl, whisk together the remaining (liquid) ingredients.
5. Add the wet ingredients into the dry and blend with a rubber spatula until combined (the batter will be thick but may be lightly lumpy).
6. Distribute the batter among the muffin cups and top with about 2 tsp of struesel.
7. Bake about 22-25 minutes.

Notes:
*This recipe was adapted from The Joy of Cooking. I love love love this cookbook, but there are about a million different editions out there (as the Amazon links shows).

**Mace is the outer-covering from nutmeg and its flavor is similar to nutmeg. I use it frequently when making spice cakes, pumpkin bread, gingerbread, pies, and anywhere I'm using nutmeg. Very yummy and it adds another dimension to the spices. You can certainly leave it out. It is available from Penzeys, possibly elsewhere.

***As always, I never use just one kind of cinnamon (and did I mention Penzeys? I get no sponsorship for talking about them, its just that I spend so much $ in their stores and they have so many good spices...). This time it was a combination of Vietnamese Cassia and Korintje Cassia. Yes, you can use just one, but the different flavors of cinnamon blended together make for some good cooking.