Applesauce oatmeal mini muffins

I made an apple pie this past weekend to use up a ready-made pie crust. Since I only had one crust, I made a quick crumb topping for the top of the pie....which left me with about a cup of leftover crumb topping! Not wanting the crumb topping to go to waste, I whipped up the applesauce oatmeal mini muffins you see above (based on a recipe I found on SparkRecipes). They are low calorie (due to the oats) and low fat (only fat in them in is in the crumb topping). Super moist with a nice apple cinnamon flavor, they were a breeze to pull together. It's crazy how the oats virtually disappear into the muffin...the oats are there bringing all their oat goodness but you are not biting into pieces of rolled oats. Victor and I have been eating them as a little post breakfast treat all week!

Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins - adapted from SparkRecipes

Crumb topping

1 cup of flour

1 cup of brown sugar

3 generous tablespoons of butter, soften

Mix flour and brown sugar. Cut in butter to make crumbs. The mixture will be crumbly without being overly buttery....of course you can add a little more butter if you choose but this amount was fine with me.

Muffins

Soak 1 cup of rolled oats in 1 cup of milk for 1 hour (I used non-fat organic milk)

1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sweetened applesauce with cinnamon (you could use regular applesauce, I just happen to always buy applesauce which already has cinnamon in it since I LOVE cinnamon)

2 egg whites

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

scant 1/2 teaspoon sea salt (you could use table salt but I used sea salt)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

Spray 2 mini muffin pans with olive oil spray and set aside.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl.

Mix the applesauce and egg whites into the milk/oats and then add to the dry ingredients, mix by hand until just combined.

Spoon batter into mini-muffin pan, top generously with crumb topping.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.

Cool on wire rack.

Yields about 30 or so mini muffins.