This Simple Topping Takes Blueberry Muffins From Good To Great

Blueberry muffins are easily one of the most homey (and also one of the most beginner-friendly) baked goods any home cook can master. A simple sweet cake batter pairs with fresh (or frozen ... or freeze-dried) fruit to create a hearty breakfast treat. But once you master this basic formula, you can start exploring other mix-ins, flavors, and ingredients to elevate your muffins. 

One of our favorite blueberry muffin upgrades isn't an addition to the batter per se. Rather, it's a way to elevate the outside of your muffin's texture. Streusel, a combination of butter, flour, and sugar, will give your muffins a crisp, buttery bite and add a distinct, bakery-worthy visual flair to your treats. You can leave your streusel mix chunky by leaving your butter in larger pieces (we recommend doing this with a fork or a pastry blender), or break it up more for a little less definition between the topping and the soft, sweet muffin underneath. Play with different sugars, spices, and more to elevate your streusel topping and give you the crumb-cake-meets-blueberry-muffin of your dreams. 

The basic formula for streusel, like blueberry muffins, is relatively simple at first but opens up endless opportunities for customization and play. One of our favorite ways to add flavor to streusel is to play with spices. Cinnamon is a classic, sure, but you could also make a pretty tasty batch of cardamom blueberry muffins and add warming spices — think ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves — to the streusel to accentuate the flavor notes of the cardamom. Your streusel doesn't have to be explicitly sweet, either; you can help counterbalance the sweetness of your muffin by using a smaller proportion of sugar to other ingredients in the streusel. 

That's not to say you can't get decadent with your streusel recipe, either. Blueberries go particularly well with maple, as the oakiness of the sweetener brings out the nuances of the fruit. Swap out the regular sugar in the topping with maple sugar for a similar textural effect, but with more woodsy undercurrents than you'd get from plain granulated or brown sugar. You can also make a lemony streusel (lemons and blueberries are an excellent pairing) by adding lemon zest to your streusel.