Banana Coffee Cake Crumb Muffins

I have been craving coffee cake every morning for a few weeks.  I sit at the kitchen table, look down at my coffee and then curse myself for not being one of those moms that wake up at 4am to make fresh pastries.  Wait, are those moms a thing?  Does that exist?  Or am I thinking of Donna Reed?  Well, I want to be her, in black-and-white with her glowing skin and her freshly made morning coffee cake.  For now, I am the mom that puts a movie on for her older kids, shoves popcorn in front of them and says, watch this while I bake muffins for my mommy/baby play group.  

I had some old bananas laying around (lying around? I still don't know) so my coffee cake craving decided to include them, and bravo bananas, bravo!  You turned these muffins into something special.  Moist and slightly sweet with a crunchy, buttery, cinnamon-y crumb topping.

I bet Donna Reed would have baked these muffins.  I bet she would have laced them with Xanax.       

Banana Coffee Cake Crumb Muffins

Makes 16 muffins

(Printable Recipe)

For Muffins:

4 T unsalted butter, room temp

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk

2 ripe bananas 

For Crumb Topping:

2/3 brown sugar

2/3 cup flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

5 T unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350.  To make muffins, in a large bowl mix together butter and sugar until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until creamy.  In a smaller bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  In one more small bowl, mash ripened bananas and stir in buttermilk.  With mixer on low speed, add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mixture and mix until combined, then add 1/2 of the banana mixture.  Continue this until everything is combined, ending with the flour.  Using an ice cream scoop, place batter into muffin tins lined with wrappers (or greased with butter).  To make topping, combine dry ingredients in a bowl and stir.  Add melted butter and stir together with a fork until mixture begins to clump together.  Sprinkle over muffins, pressing down lightly so crumbs stick to batter.  Bake for 24 minutes, or until edges start to brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.