Coffee Cake Muffins and a brunch

Coffee Cake Muffins have all the delicious-ness of coffee cake but in a small petit size.

When it comes to cooking for others my mom is natural. She can cook for 5 to 50 people with ease. I have seen her feeding close to 50 people (during our festivals) with a 3 course meal.

But look at me, this week I am throwing a brunch to my in-laws. They are family, they are not going to judge me, but I planned the menu for 2 days, grocery shopped for 3 hours and prepared over the span of 2 days for this brunch.

Is it really that hard to plan a brunch?

Of course not!! If I was not a food blogger and did not care much about minuscule this brunch would be much easier. However, it’s true, when it comes to giving party or inviting others – I have a tendency to go overboard. I am simply not like my mom.

Let me give you a little background of Indian guests. Most of the Indian guests come without giving any notice. So most people came our home like that. Sometimes, they came right after we are done with our meal. I saw my mom always so calm! She would not yell at anyone. She would not run like a headless chicken (aka like me). She would go to kitchen and prepare something with potato, onion, ginger, garlic, eggs, rice and lentils.

There are many times, I saw mom coming up with 5 dishes with these bare minimum ingredients. Oh well, she is a magician.

She does not plan what to cook. She does not follow recipes. She looks at ingredients, chops them and cook them. It’s so natural for her, no matter whatever she does – it just comes out DELICIOUS! Matthew often tells me, “You sure you were not exchanged at hospital?”

I don’t know if it’s me, but I like to plan things ahead. I need ingredients list, a recipe and much preparation for any kind of event (even if it’s just a brunch for parents). After looking at the grocery on Wednesday Matthew wondered if I am feeding the US army.

Anyhow, speaking of brunch after a lot of discussions with Mom, Sheryl, and a few blogger friends I made this menu.

However, I was dying to photograph something this week. On top of it, I had a dental procedure on Thursday. So it was a bit challenging to work on the schedule but I did the grocery shopping on Wednesday, slept and rested entire Thursday under the dose of Valium, and photographed these cupcakes on Friday.

Now you’re going to wonder did I have to shoot?

Matthew asked, mom wondered.

Yes, I had to! It makes me happy!

Saturday I prepared for 4 hours in the morning and Sunday before the brunch I worked for only 2 hours. So in total I worked for about 3 hours (Mean Planning) + 3 hours (Grocery) + 6 hours (Preparation) + 2 hours cleaning — close to 12-15 hours. Is it a lot?! What do you do? How much time do you spend behind a party?

But I enjoyed brainstorming recipes, shopping for fresh produces, cooking (read playing) with them and most importantly the time we spent together on Sunday. I loved learning Mushroom Onion Tart on a whole wheat pie shell, yogurt salad. I treasured working on flavor pairing for the sandwich. I enjoyed making the Greek salad. {All these recipes will be updated slowly}. This was important for me and it was worth every seconds of work. Like Matthew says “If that makes you happy, alright, do it.”

Initially I had plans of making fruit salad. Then I thought of making yogurt parfait – but these coffee cake muffins were calling my name! I swear, they were saying “Please bake us!”. So finally I had to give up and fall for these.

Recipe of Coffee Cake Muffins

You can prepare them in advance and store the coffee cake muffins in regular room temperature. I followed two recipes. Original links are here and here. You can use butter instead of vegetable oil, but I did not notice much difference in taste. I have used Tulip muffin liners here.

Serves 12

Muffin
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup buttermilk or yogurt
1/3 cup vegetable oil*
2 eggs
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped

Crumbs
2/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

Cinnamon Swirl
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 325F and line a muffin tin with muffin liners.
2. In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. In another bowl, mix buttermilk, vegetable oil, eggs
   and vanilla bean. Slowly pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix it thoroughly. Set it aside.
3. Meanwhile, in a food processor, add granulated sugar, ground cinnamon, salt, butter and all purpose flour. Pulse it few times or until it forms a smooth crumb. Set it aside
4. In a bowl mix granulated sugar and cinnamon. Set it aside.
5. Carefully spoon 1 tablespoon muffin mixture into the muffin liners. Sprinkle cinnamon-sugar mix on that. Carefully put another tablespoon of muffin mixture into that liner. Generously top with the crumbs. Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes or until toothpick comes clear. Cool it on a cooling rack and serve at room temperature with coffee.