Math Muffins

For the past few weeks, I have been helping teach Evie's math league. It's not a natural fit for me. I either lack a natural propensity for math or else lack enough of an interest to be competent in it. My daughter, however, fills notebooks with calculations in her free time and I want to support this interest.

After I offered to volunteer, I immediately felt apprehensive about my ability to actually teach the class. So I decided that I would bake some muffins to bring to her math league. That way, even if I didn't do a great job, everyone would still find me to be a respectable volunteer.

The kids loved the muffins and the first day was a success. And it turns out that despite getting D in Calculus in college, I am quite capable of teaching fourth grade math. However, I wasn't capable of calculating that after I brought muffins once, the kids would come to expect them each time. And so Tuesdays have become baking days as Noni and I experiment with making pumpkin and banana and chocolate chip muffins. Today, I made apple strudel muffins and they came out so well that I wanted to share. Below is the recipe, slightly modified from a recipe I found on allrecipes.com. They don't actually make you better at math, but they do taste good. Enjoy!

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 cups grated apples
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 
  

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease two 12 cup muffin pans.
2. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
3. In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar and eggs until smooth. Mix in vanilla. Stir in apples, and gradually blend in the flour mixture. Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin pan.
4. In a small bowl, mix brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture is like coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over tops of mixture in muffin pan.
5. Bake 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Allow to sit 5 minutes before removing muffins from pan. Cool on a wire rack.