TheKitchn.com

My very first job when I was in high school was at a bakery down the street from where I grew up. In the midst of boxing up cakes, slicing bread and slinging donuts on Saturday mornings, I developed a deep love affair with crumb cake that opened my eyes to a world way beyond Entenmann's. The buttery, plush dough, the fat crumbs and powdered sugar were pure bliss.

This is a crumb-cake-meets-muffin combo that is directly inspired by the classic bakery breakfast cake. And like their inspiration, these muffins have a fine, delicate crumb with a buttery, vanilla flavor and a thick topping of sweet crumbs. Ready to make them your reality? Let's get started!

Start with the basic muffin method

Even though these breakfast baked goods are inspired by a cake, we stir them together using the basic muffin method.

The muffin method is a standard procedure of mixing ingredients together in a specific order. It starts by mixing the dry ingredients together in one bowl, and the wet ingredients -- including the liquid fat -- separately in another bowl. The wet ingredients are added to the dry ingredients and gently stirred together until just mixed.

If you still see lumps after mixing, that's OK. A gentle hand here prevents the overdevelopment of gluten and gives you a nice, craggy crumb. This distinction gives you a muffin and not a cupcake, which is exactly what we're after. Your batter will be a bit thinner than a creamed batter where air is incorporated in, so don't hesitate when you notice this difference.

The best bakery-style crumb muffins start with cake flour

To create a muffin with the soft, light qualities of its crumb cake inspiration, this recipe uses cake flour in place of all-purpose flour. Cake flour is more finely ground and has less protein, which leaves the muffins with a fine, light crumb and soft texture. Using cake flour is an easy way to avoid heavy, dense muffins even if you end up stirring just a bit too much.

How to make the best crumb topping

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