Best Butter Streusel Muffin Topping

What’s better than buttery, crispy streusel? This simple muffin topping is perfect for homemade muffins, cakes, and quick bread. Adding a buttery, crunchy topping is a great way to add texture and flavor. This streusel recipe is simple and makes enough for a dozen muffins, a quick bread, or a 9-inch pie.

This butter streusel is amazing on top of muffins and creates a bakery style muffin look. But you can use streusel crumbs for more than just to top muffins! Use it on coffee cake, quick bread, and pies.  Streusel is a buttery crumb topping made of butter, flour, and sugar.

A simple streusel is similar to shortbread because it uses a high butter-to-flour ratio. This creates a tender crumble that melts in the mouth. Some recipes add other additions like spices, nuts, or even oats. However, the base of a classic streusel topping is butter, flour, and sugar. It’s delicious on peach pie. 

It’s easy to double or triple this delicious crumb topping and it freezes well for future recipes!

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Melted butter vs. cold butter in muffin topping

The state of the butter differs in many streusel recipes. Sometimes it’s cold butter, sometimes room temperature, or as in this recipe, melted butter. There are pros and cons to using butter in any of these forms.

Though this recipe uses melted butter, if you want to use cold butter instead, increase the butter amount used in the recipe to 4 Tablespoons. Here is a little more about the different forms of butter. 

Melted butter 

This is the easiest way to make streusel as no cutting or rubbing of the butter is involved. Pour melted butter over the flour mixture and stir into the crumbly mix, but don’t overmix it.

Just stir it enough until it makes crumbly clumps. Melted butter makes a more cohesive, uniform crumb mixture.

Cold butter streusel

When cold chunks of butter are used, the flour in the streusel mixture coats the pieces of butter.  You’ll get a more crumbly and “sandy” texture when you use cold butter. The fat is distributed more unevenly, resulting in pockets of moisture that evaporate during baking.

It creates a more varied texture. You’ll need a pastry cutter or use your fingers to rub the cold butter into the flour.

Room temperature butter 

It’s similar to cold butter but easier to work by hand.  Room-temperature butter is worked into the dry ingredients, creating softer pieces of streusel.

Optional extras 

• Half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon makes a cinnamon streusel topping, or use other spices (like homemade pumpkin pie spice) to bring extra flavor
• Oats – This makes more of a crisp topping than a streusel, but oats bring a lovely texture and flavor. See the recipe notes in the recipe card at the bottom of this post for adding oats to the streusel.
• Nuts- Sliced almonds or chopped pecans add extra crunch.

Yield

This recipe makes enough muffin topping for a dozen muffins and enough for a standard quick bread like banana bread or a 9-inch streusel-topped pie.

How To Make Streusel Muffin Topping

Melt the butter in a microwave-safe bowl and let it slightly cool.

In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt and use a fork to whisk it together. Drizzle the melted butter over the flour mixture and use a fork to combine it into coarse, moist crumbs.

As the streusel sits, it will stiffen up and easily crumble with your fingers. Pop it in the fridge for 5 minutes if it’s too soft.

Generously pile the crumble topping on top of the muffins, cakes, pie or quick bread. It may seem like a lot, but it will sink into the batter as it bakes.

Freezing streusel topping

Streusel topping freezes well. Mix it together, then add it to a freezer bag or airtight container. It can be frozen for up to 3 months. It will stay fairly crumbly as it freezes and can be used without thawing first.

FAQS

Recipes using streusel

If you like this recipe, here is a selection of ways it can be used!

• Blackberry Muffins
• Pumpkin Streusel Muffins
• Strawberry and Lemon Muffins
• Sourdough Pumpkin Muffins
• Homemade blueberry muffins
• Soft Cherry Muffins with Crumbly Topping
• Best Banana Muffins
• Strawberry White chocolate muffins