Sour Cream Banana Muffins with Oatmeal Crumble

These browning beauties are an invitation to bake.

We recently signed up for an organic and local produce delivery service called TCF Organics. It's a wonderful service that delivers huge quantities of delicious produce to our front porch every Wednesday at a much lower cost than you could get them anywhere else. Like a CSA, they reserve the right to choose the freshest and tastiest produce to deliver, so we never quite know what we'll find in our cooler, but we always know that it will be good. As these things go, there's usually one item that tends to pile up and so far it's been bananas.

I woke up this morning to an alarming pile of bananas in varying shades of brown, just crying out to be turned into something delicious. I am not one of those people who greet the day with a wide smile, jumping out of bed to achieve great things. This isn't some sort of new development as a result of nocturnal disturbances by sleepwalking children. I've never been a morning person, but my husband, on the other hand, is one of those mysterious morning people who completes a day's worth of activities before I painfully open my eyes. Because of this, he is the breakfast king and I rarely make breakfast treats. But tomorrow morning, we will all be rewarded by these warm sour cream banana muffins with a sweet and crumbly topping.

The crumbly oatmeal topping is sweet with caramel overtones. You can't resist picking at it.

Sour Cream Banana Muffins with Oatmeal Crumble
Ingredients:
For the muffins:
¼ pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup of dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup mashed very ripe bananas
½ cup sour cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
For the topping:
1/2 cup of oatmeal (not steel cut, the quick oats kind but not the instant kind)
1/2 cup of a dark brown sugar
1/4 cup of butter, softened

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two sheets of 12-muffin tins. (adding a dusting a flour on top of your butter or other grease barrier will help your muffins pop out beautifully after cooking.)
2. With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, beating well.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon. Add the bananas, sour cream and vanilla. Stir well.
4. Pour batter into each muffin hole, filling each 2/3 of the way up. Set aside.
5. Cream together the oatmeal, brown sugar, vanilla, and butter.
6. Scoop up a teaspoon of topping and crumble it on top of each muffin hole.
7. Bake, until a tester comes out clean, about 40 minutes.
8. Either serve warm, or cover once cooled to serve the next day for breakfast.
9. These are heavenly cut in half with a pat of salty butter on top. Also fantastic with fig preserves.