These weren’t on my longlist of recipes for this project, but at around the same time I had some peaches to use up, the Peach Crumb Muffins recipe from Smitten Kitchen Keepers floated across my radar. I know some folks don’t like to turn on the oven in the summer, but I didn’t really have a plan for those peaches. I could make jam, but that also heats up the kitchen plus adds humidity. And I still have peach jam on hand from the last time I made some anyway.

These are very easy to make; the hardest part is making neat and even slices of peach to go on top of the muffins. I didn’t worry about it too much and just did the best I could without getting obsessive about it. For the filling I used some peaches I’d stuck in the fridge a few days prior because they were bruised and on the verge of going bad. I cut those into smallish chunks for the filling. I used ripe peaches in better shape for the slices. All told I used 5 peaches, but they were not particularly big. I recommend starting with getting your 1.5 cups for the filling, and then just slicing up enough pieces to get two or three on the top.

I almost went off book and sprinkled these with turbinado sugar, a la the Perfect Blueberry Muffins, but decided not to. In the end I wish I had. These are not very sweet at all, but weirdly they also aren’t very peachy, which means there isn’t a lot going on except the occasional sugary bite of crumb. It could just be my peaches, but who knows.