Streusel Coffee Cake Muffins

So... I have an awful confession to make.  I bake out of a box.  Let me explain- I don't know how to bake, and I don't want to waste the time and ingredients, when there's a chance that it won't turn out right.  But, when you use a box, it always comes out perfect, and I always have everything I need for it.

Not today.  Dan and I were having friends over (why do we always try new things when people will be there to witness it?), and I have been craving coffee cake REALLY BADLY.  And naturally, they HAD to be individual serving sizes- hence the muffinness. :)

So I went on a search for a yummy coffee cake recipe.  Obviously, I turned to pinterest.com.  If you haven't yet discovered this gem of a website, stop reading this (you won't hurt my feelings), and go request an invite.  NOW!  Okay, so I found this recipe from marthastewart.com.  You can't get much better than Martha.  So this one is at marthastewart.com/coffee-cake-muffins.  Based on the comments, I doubled the cinnamon for the streusel, and I didn't have jumbo muffin pans, so I made regular ones, and baked them for 20 minutes.  It made 15 of them.

So these are them:

  I'm a little partial, but I think mine actually look better than Martha's.  :)

Ingredients

• For The Muffins

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs

• For The Streusel Topping

  • 1 cup packed dark-brown sugar
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour, (spooned and leveled)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Directions

1. Prepare streusel topping: In a medium bowl, stir together brown sugar, flour, and salt. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut in butter until mixture resembles large coarse crumbs; refrigerate until ready to use.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare muffins: Place cupcake liners in pan. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and baking soda; set aside.
3. Using a hand-held mixer on medium speed, beat together butter, sour cream, granulated sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well combined. With mixer on low, beat flour mixture into butter mixture.
4. Divide half the batter among prepared muffin cups. Top with half the streusel mixture, then remaining batter, and top with streusel. Bake 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

I was so excited, they came out beautifully!  Very moist, very yummy, the right amount of sweet... perfect!  I think next time I'll top it off with a little more streusel, for that added crunch (I had A LOT of streusel left over).  Very good experience for a first from scratch baking attempt.  Write about them is making me want one.  I think I'll go get one.  Trust me, you want one, go make them! :)

Post-Valentine's Day Sugar High

Valentine's Day is baker and crafter heaven.  At least for me it is.  It's when you get to get away with drawing hearts on things, using glitter paint and bake pink monstrosities. :)

The only baking I really did this season was making cake pops with our wonderful youth group girls.  We're always coming up with new ways to raise funds for our youth group.  We decided to make cake pop "bouquets".  Each of these bouquets consisted of three cake pops.  Red velvet and strawberry cake with chocolate and vanilla candy coating- yumm.

These are our awesome girls.  Those were so scrumptious!

For Valentine's Day my mom sent us a dozen Georgetown Cupcake cupcakes.  They are who we used for our wedding, and they're simply the best!

Because my parents live so far away, and don't get experience these things with us, We set up our camera to take multiple shots, so they could see us opening the box of cupcakes.  I love that my husband supports these kinds of crazy ideas. :)

We love these cupcakes so much!  We were super excited.

We got the Valentine's Day dozen.  They were so amazing!

This is what my night looked like: Cupcakes and Roman Holiday.  Pretty awesome Valentine's Day!

There are not too many words to describe how yummy this Strawberry Lava Fudge one is!

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day, no matter how or who you spent it with!

Keep the love and cupcakes flowing!

My sweet sweet hubby baked me a birthday cake!

So, being newly married, and both of us in new jobs, we don't have that much to splurge, but my dear husband surprised me, and baked me a cake-all on his own.  To make it even better, he took pictures of the process so I could blog about it.  I'm the luckiest girl ever!

Red velvet is my favorite cake.  Then, he put Hershey's chocolate frosting between the layers.

Mmmm... to such amazing layers!  So much cake!

Then, he frosted the outside with whipped cream frosting.  M-m-m.

How lucky am I, seriously!?

This is a very happy birthday girl!

All out in one blow!

Yummy ooey-gooey inside!

Baking 60 cupcakes!!!

Mmmm, cupcakes!

So, having a husband who's a youth pastor makes for a lot of pizza, staying up all night (church lock-ins), and of course fundraisers.  So, every couple months the youth serve lunch after church.  $5 will get you a bowl of soup (this time my honey made a corn chowder-yummm!), a grilled cheese sandwich, a pop (yeah, I'm in Ohio now, I say pop) and a desert.  When it comes to desert, people automatically look at me, which I don't mind. :)  So, I'm baking 60 cupcakes.  Sometimes it's a plus to have a small church.  I bakes strawberry, lemon and funfetti.

Here they all are!  (Notice our cupcake-aholic dog eyeballing them.  He is totally waiting for me to blink, so he can steal one.)

I really hate how the mixes never quite make 2 dozen (I always end up with 20.  No matter what I do.) and the frosting never covers them all like I would like.  So, I decided to go with just a dollop of frosting.  I'm not over-joyed with how they turned out, but for $1.25, they're not so bad. :)

This is how I started frosting them.  Then, after I went through 1/2 1 can, having only frosted 8, I decided to cut back.  That brought these...

Still cute though! :)

So, if you're anywhere in the Willard area, come to our church tomorrow, and support the youth group!

So, my sweet hubby got me a frosting bag with a petal tip.  I was thinking of adding roses to these, but the roses were harder than I thought.  Plus I don't have all the right tools.  So, I put it on one, to see how it would look.  I love it.  But I still need lots of practice.  So, once I've mastered it, I'll post about that, and give you detailed instructions.  Until then, this'll have to do! :)

Felt rosette pin/hair clip

So, I recently really love rosettes, especially as jewelry, or hair accessories.  I don't have any fabric right now, but thanks to my mom, I have beautiful felt.  So, I decided to try to make felt rosettes.  They turned out even cuter than I thought!  Check out the really easy tutorial!

Fun felt jewelry.

I used an inch wide, and about 4 1/2 inch long piece of felt, safety pins, and my trusty needles.

I started out by folding over a little bit on top, to make for a fuller .  Then I  rolled it into a tight bud.

Then, I kept rolling it, until I rolled the whole piece of felt up.

Next, I ran the needle through a few times, in a few places to secure it.  I tried to make sure that on top I didn't make any "visible" stitches.

At the end I ran the needle through the bottom, to tie it off.

Like this!

I made two of them.

I sewed to felt balls to the side, and then sewed a safety pin to it.  By using a safety pin, I can use it as a pin, or run a bobby pin through it, and add it to my hair.

Ta-da!!!

"Felt" like surrounding myself with flowers.

These little cutie-pie pins are my newest craze.

My mom is my craft supplier.  We "go shopping" on Etsy together, since we can't actually, and she is always supporting whatever my latest interest is.  Right now it's felt.  I've always loved felt.  It makes me think of warm and cozy things, and it's easy to sew (which is a bonus for me!).  

So, my mom got me these beautiful felt squares from Three Sheep Studio http://www.etsy.com/people/ThreeSheepStudio.  They have amazing colors, and the texture is so rich!  My mom wanted my room to be yellow and blue, but I insisted on pink.  So, in today's craft, I decided to make both camps happy.  I am making a yellow and pink flower pin, with a pink bud.  I like making pins, because they are a great way to make an outfit pop, and with a little bit of maneuvering, they can be added to hair bands, bracelets, bags, hats... they're perfect!

So, I started off with a yellow and blue square of felt, a pink felt ball, which I had left over from my "Hungarian craft stash".  However, you can easily find these on Etsy, or craft stores.  I also have matching pink thread and safety pins.

This is the pattern that I used.  They are purposefully not even, or perfect.  I like them to look just a little more "accidental".  Of course, you could use any pattern and size you want.

First, I cut out the larger flower.

Then the smaller one.

I laid them out, to see how I liked the color combination, and to see which way the flowers layered best.

Firstly, I sewed the felt ball to the smaller flower.  I tried to sew down a pretty large area, because I didn't want the ball to really move around.

Secondly, I stitched the smaller flower to the larger one.

Next, I sewed the pin to the back of the flower.  The back of this pin isn't too pretty, which my mom probably would notice, but trust me - no one else will! :)  I stitch along the pin as close as possible, and as many time, because I'm always afraid it'll com undone.

So, this is what your flower should look like.

Finally, I did a blanket stitch along the large flower, to give it a "finished" look.

Add to outfit, and done!

So, these flowers are the perfect little "maybe-more-shabby-than-chic" accessory I'm trying out right now.  My dog loves them so much, he put one in his mouth, but was sorely disappointed when it didn't taste like the last thing I made that he stole... a cupcake!  :)

Please let me know if these craft ideas are helpful to you, I would love to get some feedback!