Servings: 6 Prep: 15 mins Cook: 18 mins Total: 45 mins
For the most part, this is just a recipe for Streusel. It’s simply a delightfully frisky way to adorn your muffins and coffee cakes.
This is also part of an unsponsored series on Lakanto products. I had a great experience with their customer service and decided I’d try an experiment using their products. It’s not something I’d ever done before, always opting to cook from scratch. However, being my own boss, I ordered myself to switch it up. I thought it might be fun to try some pre-made mixes!
In this case, I’m using the Lakanto Blueberry Muffin Mix. However, if you don’t want to use that, or simply don’t have any lying around, you can use any blueberry muffin base. (I’ve got a spectacular Blueberry Muffin recipe in my book The Fakery, FWIW)
So, how’s the mix, you might ask? Most of the Lakanto products I tried were wonderful. There are really only two I don’t think I’d buy again. Regrettably, this is one of them. It was good, to be sure, but it wasn’t special. It was fine. Very edible and super easy to make. It has its merits! However, it also seemed woefully low on actual blueberries. Beyond that, they’re dried chopped blueberries. They kind of disappear into the muffin, without really taking center stage.
To be fair, one way to lower carbs in a product is to lower the fruit content. So… bye bye blueberries! It’s always a struggle to find the right balance. Their mix, straight from the bag, has about 3 net carbs per serving (despite their Amazon listing suggesting it’s just 1 [as of this writing]). Thankfully, this is for two small muffins, but I can’t help but feel I’d almost prefer twice as many blueberries, and eat just one (or two, then hit the treadmill). Depending on where your dietary limits fall, this may be perfect, as is. If you’re maintaining or just have a higher carb threshold, toss some fresh blueberries into the mix before baking. It’ll go from a blueberry muffin to a Blueberry Muffin!
As the mix exists, I give it credit for having blueberry flavor and allowing for two muffins, per serving. However, it’s very light on blueberry (to be expected) and is just generally lackluster. I give it a C.
I also tweaked the recipe a little bit, by adding some orange zest. I love the combination of orange and blueberry. Then, I topped it off with a fresh homemade pecan streusel. While the Lakanto mix is just a C… the Streusel is a solid B+.
Not too shabby!
Note: Makes 12 muffins and serves 6, at 2 muffins per person.
Orange-Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Streusel
Print Pin RateIngredients
Orange-Blueberry Muffins
- 1 package Lakanto Bluerry Muffin Mix
- 3 eggs
- 1/3 cup melted butter or coconut oil
- 1 whole orange
- Dash salt
Pecan Streusel
- 1 cup pecans
- 2 tbsp sugar replacement
- 1 tbsp melted butter
- 1 tbsp yacón syrup substitute: blackstrap molasses or honey
- 1 tsp fresh orange zest from muffin mix process
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
- Dash salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F (163°C).
- Add your muffin mix to a medium sized mixing bowl.
- In a small mixing bowl, whisk together your eggs and melted butter or coconut oil. Pour this into the dry mix and whisk, to combine.
- Wash the orange, dry it, then zest the outside peel, to get about 2 tsp (10mL) of orange zest. Chop this and set aside.
- Juice the orange, removing the seeds. Pour the juice and half of the orange zest to the muffin batter. Discard what remains of the orange. Add a dash of salt and whisk to combine.
- Grease a 12-cup muffin pan, then divide the batter between the 12 cups.
- Chop the pecans into a mishmash of bits and pieces. Even better, put them into a food processor and pulse (turn it on and off, in quick bursts) so that it’s a mixture of a fine-ish flour and pecan bits. Just don’t go so long it starts to turn into a puree (pecan butter).
- In a separate bowl, combine the pecan bits/flour, sugar replacement, melted butter, (molasses, honey or yacón), the other half of the orange zest, nutmeg and salt. Mix until the mixture is evenly coated with butter and molasses.
- Note: In this case we need the molasses, honey or yacón because it functions like glue, holding the streusel together in clumps. Yacón is the best, most lowest carb option, but is also a bit on the exotic and hard to find side. You CAN omit these ingredients, but the result will be a bit flatter in appearance (potentially more refined, if that’s your goal).
- Squeeze small handfuls of the streusel inside your fist, compressing little boulders of it. Gently break these up and scatter evenly over the top of the batter in the muffin pan. Continue forming fist-boulders, then breaking them into craggly crogs all over the top of the batter, until there is no more streusel in the bowl.
- Bake for about 13 to 18 minutes, or until the surface is dry and the streusel is clearly beginning to crisp and turn golden.
- Remove from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes before removing from the pan. Enjoy warm!
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