Berry Streusel Muffins

I picked up this recipe a while ago on a blog trawl and tucked it away on my hard drive to use later. I rediscovered it the other day and made these muffins and I am blown away.


I could have been eating these muffins months ago. What was I thinking?


I picked up the recipe from the Kitchen Wench the first food blog I ever read, and still one of favorites.


They are dubbed Lawsuit Muffins. I can totally understand using these muffins to bribe a jury, or intimidate the oppostion. It would definately succeed.


Essentially these are a buttermilk muffin with a little fruit and a streusel topping. Like the 'Wench I didn't have any nuts in the cupboard so I used her substituted topping recipe.
I used some blueberries and raspberries left over from cheese cakes, for the fruit filling. I have plans to do some apple or apricot ones in the near future.


This recipe is a keeper, for sure.

Lawsuit Buttermilk Muffin Recipe

Muffin Ingredients

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 1/2 tbsp grated citrus zest or 2 tsp lemon juice

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk

2 1/2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour

*Pinch of salt

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

1 3/4 - 2 cups fruit (if using large fruits you may want to coarsely chop them)

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C ^ and line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Mix together flour, salt, baking powder and bicarb soda in a bowl then set aside.
3. In another bowl, combine the oil, brown sugar, citrus zest/lemon juice and egg. Once combined, stir in the buttermilk and vanilla extract.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix till combined but do not overmix. Once combined gently add the fruit and mix in. Leave to sit for about 5 minutes and check the batter consistency - if it is still quite watery then add a little more flour as the batter should be quite stiff and hold it’s shape.
5. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups and fill pretty much to the top. Don’t do anything silly like smooth the tops over as muffins look tastier when their tops are messily puffed! Sprinkle whichever streusel topping you’re using evenly on top of each muffin and make sure they are well covered as when they cook they expand a lot and suddenly there isn’t as much streusel as you thought there was!
6. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower temperature to 160 degrees C^ and bake for another 10 minutes. When the muffins are done they will spring back when lightly touched.
7. Let the muffins cool in the tray for 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
8. Enjoy! (especially if you have a nice cup of tea or hot chocolate!)
* If you’re using fruit flavouring of the liquid kind such as concentrated orange juice, you’ll need to slightly increase your flour amounts so bear this in mind at step 4 when checking the consistency.