The muffin. It's such a simple little thing. There may be a lot of them on a platter, but when you grab one, it's all yours. No one asks to split a muffin with you like they do a slice of cake. And if someone suggests it, shake your head incredulously and tell them to grab their own dang muffin!

The weather keeps getting colder, the apples at the store keep getting better and better, and I wanted to bake. Do I make an apple pie? Apple cake? Apple crisp? I love all those things so I decided to basically make them all at once - in miniature form!

To start the muffins, simply take all the dry ingredients, add them to a bowl and whisk them up to blend them together. I added allspice and cinnamon to give a nice spice base to the batter, a lot of recipes call for mace and/or nutmeg and while I like them, I find they can easily become too powerful in a recipe and outshine the true star of these muffins: the apples (and the incredible crisp topping).