Carrot Muffins

Carrot Muffins
taken from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

for the streusel:
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons spelt flour
2 tablespoons oat bran
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes

dry ingredients:
1 cup spelt flour
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup oat bran
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2 cups grated carrots

wet ingredients:
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat muffin tin insets with butter.

Add all dry ingredients to a mixing bowl and blend well. Add grated carrots to this mixture.

In a small bowl, whisk together the melted butter, buttermilk and egg, then whisk until thoroughly combined. Then gradually incorporated dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Scoop batter into muffin tin. Batter should be slightly mounded above the edge.

For the streusel topping... measure the flour, oat bran, sugars and salt into a bowl or food processor. Add the cold butter to the mixture and either pulse or cut in until the mix is fairly coarse. It's important to do this step quickly, and it's much easier to do it quickly with a food processor, so I highly recommend that method.

Sprinkle the streusel topping generously over batter and press gently into batter.

Bake muffins for 32 to 35 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. When the muffins are done, they'll smell nutty and the bottoms will be a golden brown. Once you remove muffins from oven, twist each muffin up and out and let them set sideways in the muffin tin until completely cooled (this will prevent bottoms from getting soggy....see picture below).