Chocolate Cherry Streusel Muffin Tops

By Addie

A favorite flavor combo, these muffins resemble crumb cakes when made with streusel. If you make them with their topping, be sure to use a toaster oven or regular oven to reheat them instead of a slot toaster.

MY NOTES: Just skip the cherries and make chocolate chip muffins!

Ingredients

• BATTER:
• 1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) sweet or sour dried cherries, chopped
• 1/2 cup (3 ounces) chocolate chips (optional)
• 1/4 cup (3/4 ounce) Dutch-process cocoa, OR
• 3 tablespoons Dutch-process cocoa plus 1 tablespoon black cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick, 2 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 cup (2 ounces) water
• ........................................
• STREUSEL TOPPING:
• 3/4 cup (3 1/8 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup (1 5/8 ounces)almond flour*
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) glazing or confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon almond flavor, 1 drop bitter almond oil, OR
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) butter
• Optional, but very tasty! Use 2 tablespoons extra flour if leaving out.

Details

Adapted from kingarthurflour.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease the cups of your muffin top pan.

For the batter: In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cherries, chips (if you're using them), cocoa, baking powder and salt. Mix in the soft butter—the mixture will be crumbly. Add the eggs and water and mix until evenly moistened. Us a generouse 1/4 cup of batter to fill the cups of the muffin-top pan.

For the topping: In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients and the flavoring. Using a pastry blender, a fork, or your fingers, cut in the butter to form crumbs. Top the entire surface of each muffin with a generous amount of crumbs.

Bake the muffin tops for 14 to 16 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center of one comes out clean. Cool the tops for 5 minutes in the pan, and then transfer them to a rack to cool completely. Dust with additional glazing or confectioners' sugar if desired. Yield: 6 muffin tops.
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REVIEWS:

Wow, these look fantastic. I made these in regular muffin tins, following the suggestion on a previous comment. When I put the streusel on I was thinking, "this looks really weird," but when they came out of the oven the tops looked like decadent chocolate crinkle cookies. I agree with the comments about adding extra oil. My first batch I added 1 extra T veg oil but they were still quite dry (I also use whole wheat flour which probably makes them dryer). The next batch I added 2-3 T veg oil which helped. Love the flavor!

I agree this muffin tastes very dry. Next time I will do as reviewer suggests by adding olive oil or even vegetable oil. Muffin tops looked beautiful but dry.

Just pulled out the new batch that I added 4 Tablespoons olive oil to the recipe and they were tender & moist!! Nancy was right about adding the oil. Soo good

I loved the chocolate and dried sour cherry taste. The streusel topping with the almond flour was special but I found the muffin dry. I asked my friend Nancy Beykirch @ Kitchen Kneads how to make it more moist and she suggested to use 2 ounces butter and 2 ounces olive oil & perhaps to add 1 more Tablespoon olive oil. I will try again tomorrow because it is a great recipe

Can these be baked in a regular muffing pan?
(To bake these in a regular muffin pan, lower the temperature to 375' and test after 20 minutes. Irene @ KAF)

Fantastic muffins! My husband loved them so much he thinks I should open a bakery!

These were really great tasting and EASY as can be. My daughter loved them. They really are a very nice combination of flavors. There were some parts missing from the recipe, though. There's no oven temp given so I just winged it and set the oven at 350. It doesn't say to grease the muffins cups or not so I didn't. It doesn't which pan to use so I used a regular muffin pan and ended up with 8 muffins. They were done at 23 minutes. I was very generous with the topping but still ended up with alot left. I'm saving it for the next batch. Next time I'm going to leave the salt out of the topping or at least cut it in half because we could taste it in there. Maybe I'll replace it with a tiny bit of cinnamon. That might be a nice addition. I think brown sugar in the topping instead of white would be nice, too. Thanks for sharing. I'll be making these again.

I can't decide if these look better, smell better, or taste better. My goodness my house smells like chocolaty butter heaven, and I can't stop looking at these beautiful muffins. I doubled the batch and everything was perfect except that I don't think I needed that much streusel topping. I ended up throwing more than half of it away. Next time I will only make the normal amount of streusel for the double patch of muffins. Other than that the process was very easy, and the batter was rich and thick just like brownies. The muffins puffed perfectly in the oven, and were great for photos which I'll be posting later.