Spiced muffins dotted with chunks of fresh apple, and topped with crunchy turbinado sugar. Makes 12 large or 24 cupcake sized muffins.

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There are few things I love and regularly crave more than a good muffin. I came across the original version of this recipe when I was still more comfortable using sourdough discard for baking than using my sourdough starter for making actual bread. When I first started making it, I also topped it with a vanilla glaze, which you can of course do, but I find that just leaving it with turbinado sugar as a topping makes it perfectly sweet while still feeling healthy enough to eat for breakfast.

Why you’ll love this recipe:

It’s a great way to use up sourdough discard
It comes together quickly. Usually in the time it takes for the oven to preheat the muffins are ready to go in.
It has the flavors of Fall without being a full on pumpkin recipe
It’s a healthier treat, so you’ll feel better after eating it than some other Fall themed baked good recipes.

Ingredients:

3 cups (411gr) all purpose flour
1 tablespoon pumpkin spice (can substitute for 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp cardamom, 1/4 tsp ginger)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups peeled apple cut into 1/2” chunks (about 1 large or two medium apples)
3/4 cup (12 tbl or 170gr) unsalted butter, to be browned
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup (240gr) sourdough discard
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
3-4 tablespoons turbinado sugar

Step-by-Step Directions

Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C) and line 12 large muffin tins or 24 cupcake sized tins with muffin liners. In a large bowl, whisk together all purpose flour, baking powder, sea salt, and pumpkin spice. Peel and cut apple into 1/2” size chunks and mix into the flour. This helps coat the apples so they don’t sink to the bottom.

In a medium saucepan, brown 12 tbl (1 1/2 sticks) of butter. It can be cold from the fridge, see below explanation on browning butter if needed. You should end up with about 2/3 cup browned butter at the end. If you are short any, add fresh butter or a cooking oil like coconut, canola, or olive oil. Add browned butter (being sure you scrape the browned bits from the bottom of the pan), brown sugar, regular sugar, vanilla, sourdough starter, eggs and egg yolk to a medium sized heat proof bowl and mix together. Pour into the dry ingredients and use a rubber spatula to mix, being sure to get all of the flour at the bottom of the bowl. The batter will be thick, do not over mix.

Divide the batter equally into the muffin tins so they are each about 3/4 of the way full. Top with turbinado sugar, abot 1/2-3/4 tsp per muffin. Bake in the 425°F (220°C) oven for five minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 350°F (180°C) for 15-20 minutes. Rotate the muffins and swap racks halfway through. If you are baking smaller muffins, check for doneness when they’ve been in the oven for about 15 minutes. When a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out with just a few crumbs, or the center of the muffin resists when you press into it, they are done. Remove from the oven and carefully remove from the muffin tin and place on a cooling rack. If you leave them in the tin while it cools, the carryover heat can dry them out. I like to use a fork to scoop them out and then grab them quickly to transfer so I don’t burn my fingers.

Let cool to room temperature before eating. Lasts for up to 4 days in an airtight container.

Frequently asked Questions

Can this recipe be made gluten free? Many of my gluten free friends, who don’t have wheat allergies, can tolerate sourdough bread, which means the sourdough discard in this recipe wouldn’t bother them either. When I made this for them I used Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Gluten Free Baking replacement flour and sourdough starter, and it came out great—no one would know you used gluten free flour if you didn’t tell them.

Can I use an alternative oil instead of browned butter? Yes, just sub 1:1 your oil of choice and use 2/3 cup of oil.

What if I don’t have sourdough discard? If you don’t have sourdough discard, you’ll need to make the following adjustments to the recipe: use 1 cup of buttermilk or milk in the recipe in place of discard, and add 120 gr of all purpose flour (about 3/4 cup plus 2 tbl)

What type of apples should I use for this recipe? Typically I use more tart and crisp apples like Fuji, Honeycrisp, or Pink Lady. You could also use Granny Smith, just be sure to discard any spots with bruises.

How to Brown Butter

If you’ve never browned butter before, you may feel intimidated, but I promise with a little bit of supervision you’ll know how to zhuzh up an every day ingredient into something even more complex and special.

The process of browning the butter does two things: 1) Cooks off the water in the butter, which means that the resulting browned butter will be about 20-25 grams lighter, and have about 30% less volume than butter that has been simply melted; and 2) Separates the whey, or milk proteins, from the butter fat and toasts the milk protein so that it has a wonderful nutty caramel aroma and flavor (if you’re a food science nerd, this is called the Maillard Reaction, and is the same process that makes perfectly browned grilled cheese so delicious).

If you start the process with butter cold from the fridge, it takes about 5 minutes over a medium heat. The trick with browning butter, is that it can go from browned to burnt in a matter of seconds, even after it is taken off the heat. When I had my home bakery, I had a cookie recipe that I used to make thousands of massive (almost 1/2 lb cookies), and the recipe took a lot of browned butter, so I have had quite a bit of practice, and here is what I have learned:

Use a small - medium stainless steal (not non-stick or glass) saucepan to brown the butter. If you are browning a large amount, then make sure you use a medium-large sauce pan since the butter foams and expands as the water is evaporating.
Once the butter is fully melted and starts to crackle (this is the sound of the water evaporating) watch it very closely. Don’t walk away or multitask or you could miss the window.
Keep an eye on the pan as it is cooking, and rotate it or scrape the sides with a rubber spatula if you notice one part of the pan is browning the butter early.
Use your ears to tell when it is close. Dorie Greenspan described the crackling slowing down to a “polite applause” when it is almost done, and a few seconds after is when I typically remove the pan from the heat.
Another sign it is ready is when it starts to foam and smell nutty, take it off the heat. You won’t be able to see the browning, but trust me it is forming beneath the foam.
If you move the foam aside and can see the bottom of the pan, and nothing looks browned yet, do not fret—the carry over heat from the pan will finish the browning. If you wait a few seconds too long and the butter is turning dark brown, then quickly use a rubber spatula to scrape all of the browned bits into an empty bowl before the residual heat from the pan over cooks it.
Be careful adding any other ingredients to it, if it has moisture, it will seize, and the steam can burn.
Wait a few minutes for the pan to cool before using a rubber spatula to scrape all of the lovely brown bits you can into a heat proof bowl

Recipe adapted from Raspberries and Kohlrabi. Original recipe can be found here.

Sourdough Discard Apple Muffins

How to Brown Butter