Coffee Cake Muffin Recipe

This Coffee Cake Muffin recipe with Greek yogurt is moist, full of texture and full of flavor. The key to any excellent baked sweet is good technique and quality ingredients. I love this recipe because it uses Greek yogurt, which I always have on hand (Homemade Greek Yogurt Recipe). Greek yogurt gives this muffin an extra moist texture as well as a beautiful tangy flavor. To top it off, streusel adds a crumble to the top of the muffin, and a “cinnamony” filling layered in the middle of the muffin ensures that every bite of this muffin is yummy!

Understanding the Basics

Baking is a skill that anyone can master, but that doesn’t mean that all it takes is adding ingredients to a bowl and mixing. Each different bake requires a certain technique, from brownies, to cakes, to bread, to cookies and pastry. Once you learn the technique behind each of these items, the world of baking if full of possibilities for you. Understanding the science behind baking is not essential to baking something delicious. However, I think it just makes baking fun! Understanding gluten and its role in baking is the beginning of a solid foundation of baking knowledge.

What is gluten? All flours that come from wheat–all-purpose flour, bread flour, cake flour–contain proteins which, when mixed with a liquid like water or milk, form what we know as gluten. Gluten then forms the network of elastic bands that create structure and allow bread to rise and things like focaccia and bagels to be chewy.
When do we want to develop a lot of gluten? When we’re making baked goods like focaccia bread that we want to be nice and chewy, or when we are baking artisan breads like baguettes, and we want a lot of structure to allow for a good rise in the dough.
How do we develop a lot of gluten? First, use a flour that contains more protein, like bread flour. More protein, more gluten potential. Second, gluten development is enhanced by manipulation like stirring, kneading, or mixing. That’s why we knead yeast breads until they are smooth and elastic. It’s that elasticity that gives us the structure we need to support a high rise in a loaf of bread.
When do we NOT want to develop a lot of gluten? MUFFINS and other quick breads, like banana bread or zucchini bread, pie crust, and biscuits. No one wants chewy muffins or biscuits, or tough pie crusts; and too much gluten development will give you just that. Instead, we want our muffins, biscuits and pie crusts to be nice and tender, so this is when we want to minimize the development of gluten.
How do we minimize gluten development? For quick breads, namely muffins, all-purpose flour is better because its protein content is lower than bread flour. Less protein, less gluten. In addition, you want to manipulate the batter as little as possible once you add your liquid. In this coffee cake muffin recipe, you can accomplish this by folding in the dry ingredients just until you don’t see any dry flour and stop! Avoid overmixing! The stand mixer is fine until we add the liquid to the dry ingredients. After that, we want to do this by hand to avoid overmixing. The batter doesn’t have to be smooth. In fact, it can be rather lumpy.

The Muffin Technique

Like most baked goods, there is a specific technique no matter what the recipe is. With cookies, I can take any list of ingredients and I know that I am going to cream the butter and sugar and mix in the dry ingredients just until incorporated. There is also a key technique when making muffins. Once you have this knowledge you can conquer any muffin recipe, even if you are given just the ingredients.

How to use the muffin technique:

creamed butter for coffee cake muffin recipe

First you cream your butter and sugar together. You know your butter has been creamed enough when it has lightened in color. Before moving on, make sure to scrape down the sides of your bowl and incorporate everything equally. Then add the eggs one by one until each egg is fully incorporated.

Mix the milk and Greek yogurt in a separate bowl. Some recipes use sour cream and some just use milk. The Greek yogurt gives the muffins a moist texture with the addition of a sweet tanginess. Then slowly mix the milk/yogurt mixture into the butter, sugars and eggs. This mixture will be pretty wet, but that is normal. It also might have specks of butter and yogurt, but that will also be okay once you mix your wet ingredients with your dry.

Greek yogurt and milk mixture for the Coffee Cake Muffin Recipe

Batter for the coffee cake muffin recipe

Whisk together the dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking powder, any spices, etc. We want them mixed thoroughly at this point, because we want to minimize stirring once we add the liquids. Having a large, heavy mixing bowl makes this recipe even simpler; giving you enough room to properly fold in the ingredients and heavy enough were it is not continue tipping as your mixing. I use my mixing bowl everyday for a variety of recipes.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.

Fold in the wet ingredients just until you no longer see dry flour.

Assemble in the muffin pan. It is nice to have two pans because then you can assemble all the muffins at one time and bake all at once. Here are the standard size muffin pans we use at the bakery, click here. With most recipes, you will fill your muffin liners about 80 percent full of batter. This particular recipe will have some layers so read on!

Making a Streusel for your Coffee Cake Muffin Recipe

This is such a simple streusel because it requires no pastry cutter, no elbow grease to cut in the ingredients and is so quick to come together.

First whisk together the flour, sugar and spices. Then take your melted butter and slowly add it in. I usually add a third of the butter in, and whisk. Then add the next third and whisk, then add the last third and whisk. You can use a whisk or a fork. In the end your streusel should be nice and crumbly.

Making the Filling for your Coffee Cake Muffin Recipe

My husband is one of those people who normally prefers the top, or streusel, of the muffin to the rest of the muffin. This muffin is perfect for him because there is a filling in the center that makes sure there is plenty of texture and flavor throughout the muffin. The filling for this muffin is just a layer that is added in the center of the muffins. To make it, you simply whisk together brown sugar and cinnamon. It just adds the perfect combo of texture to the center of the muffin and adds a nice, sweet balance to the tangy yogurt-based muffin.

ingredients for coffee cake muffin recipe filling in a bowl with cinnamon and brown sugar

Filling Your Muffin Tins

You will start off by filling all your muffin cups halfway. This is a little less than a quarter cup. Next, add a tablespoon of the filling. After that, add another quarter cup of filling and then top the whole thing off with streusel. Your muffin tin will be almost filled to the top.