Summer peach muffins for a Sunday Brunch Fest!

Three day holiday weekends don't mean anything to me.  I work customer service.  At a high end grocery store.  Meaning that the only days we are ever closed are Thanksgiving day and Christmas day, or in the off chance that we get 2 feet of snow dumped on us.  If I take three days off in a row, I am not getting paid for them, so often I never take them.  This memorial day in no different.  I am working tomorrow and getting paid time and a half to do so.  I worked yesterday like usual.  But today is a Sunday.  And I happened to be scheduled off!  What to do, on a Sunday morning?

Silly you.  Couldn't you guess?  Sundays invented a thing called BRUNCH!  It's a beautiful meal where you gorge yourself on heavily carb and protein based num nums, and you nurse that nasty hangover with a bloody mary, a mimosa or a PBR shandy (mix half PBR and half ginger ale.  I like mine over ice.)  Working most weekends, and most Sundays, I don't often have the pleasure of taking the time to make brunch for me and my Monkey.  But today, today is different!

So I asked the Monkey what he wanted for breakfast.  We often have smoothies of some kind on my weekdays off, and we had just enjoyed pancakes earlier in the week when we hosted a slumber party extravaganza for my three little step nieces.  We needed something different.  Exciting.  Unusual.  I didn't have any good bread handy for french toast and while I adore waffles, they are much too similar to the recently consumed pancakes.  I did what I do when I need an inspiration.  Help me Betty!

A quick side note.  One of the first things I did when I moved out on my own was drive to Barnes and Nobel and purchase two books.  One of them was "The Joy Of Cooking" and the other was "Betty Crocker's Cookbook."  It seemed to me that any adult who has the slightest interest in not eating out all the time, should own these two books.  I have since added MANY classic to my collection (Moosewood cooks at home, a few classic Martha Stewart collections, etc) but Betty is always there for me.  I love allrecipes (especially the ipad app!), epicourous, the Whole Foods Market website, and many other blogs (smitten kitchen, the sisters fierce, living with purple) but I always refer to Betty for the basics.  Her chocolate chip cookie, zucchini and banana bread, and pancake recipes are my go to, and the pie crust page of the book is wrinkled with water and flour stains from the number of times I have used it.  Let's see what I can find this time.

Betty Crocker's Muffin Recipe
(This is her recipe for blueberry muffins, I used fresh chopped peaches instead.)

Streusel topping:
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 Tablespoons cold butter or margarine (I used butter)

Muffins:
3/4 cup milk (I always use soy since that is what I always have in the house, with nether myself or the Monkey being milk drinkers.  Soy has always been an even substitute and has never been a problem for me in my cooking)
1/4 cup oil (I always use canola or olive.  Yes friends, olive oil can actually be amazing in sweet baking. Today I used canola.)
1 Egg
2 cups flour (again, here is where I get creative.  I always use Spelt flour while baking.  I am not gluten intolerant, however I do have a sensitivity towards wheat when I eat it often, so I just err on the side of safety and use spelt.  I did one cup whole spelt and one cup white spelt to make it the teeniest bit healthier and because I enjoy a little substance in my food.  The exception to this rule is when making sushi when white rice will always conquer brown in my opinion.  But I digress.)
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup fruit (Today I used three small peaches, chopped into bit size pieces.)


1) Heat oven to 400.  Line 12 regular-sized muffin cups with paper baking cups (which is what I did, because I am, say it with me now, LAZY) or spray bottoms only of cups with cooking spray.  In medium bowl, stir in 1/4 cup flour, the brown sugar and cinnamon until mixed.  Cut in butter, using pastry blender or fork, until mixture is crumbly; set aside.
2) In large bowl, beat milk, oil and egg with fork or wire whisk until blended.  Add 2 cups of flour, sugar, baking powder and salt all at once; stir just until flour is moistened (god I hate that word).  Batter will be lumpy (another awful word.  Bleh.)  Gently fold in fruit.
3)  Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, and sprinkle each with about 1 tablespoon streusel.
4) Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown (I baked mine 25 minutes since I used peaches which are a little more firm than berries.)  If muffins were baked in sprayed pan, leave in pan about 5 minutes, then remove from pan to cooling rack.  If they were baked in paper baking cups (which is what I did), immediately remove from pan to cooling rack and let cool.
5) Consume muffins, either while warm or cool.

Let me just say, YUM.  I don't remember ever making muffins before.  As a kid, my family was big on cookies, pancakes, waffles, pies and banana bread, but muffins were not in the rotation. Well, let's just say that those days are far behind me.  This was delicious and easy, and I foresee the muffin pages of my Betty Crocker cookbook, becoming wrinkled and water logged with my repeat love and attention.  And maybe also due to the fact that I am far more talented at making messes than baking.  But you have to be good at something in this world, right?  

4.