Everybody loves a good donut for breakfast, but they're a mess to fry, and to be honest I never know what to do with the oil once I've fried in it, so I tend to not make donuts at home. I remembered that in culinary school we would sometimes whip up little donut imposters called Sugar Donut Muffins that we would eat for breakfast. Unfortunately I didn't save the recipe, but I remembered the process and I didn't think it would be that hard.
I decided to do a quick google search to see if there were any recipes and I couldn't believe how many there were! I had no idea these were so popular! I thought my instructor had come up with the concept. Go figure! After reading through several different recipes I decided to use the one from Baking Bites. It had the simplest ingredients, and most importantly, I had all of the ingredients!
I did change just a couple of things. The first being that I used Pumpkin Pie Spice in place of nutmeg. I'm not a huge fan of nutmeg, especially when it's the primary flavor. Pumpkin Pie Spice contains some nutmeg as well as cinnamon and ginger so it has a nicer flavor. It's really versatile, and I use it in a lot of things.
The other change I made was that the Baking Bites recipe just has you brush the butter on and I have you dip the whole muffin in the melted butter. If you're going for lower fat (notice I didn't say "low fat") then brush the butter on rather than dip the muffins.
These are quick to make and very easy to make. If you look at the pictures you'll see that M2 made the entire muffin by herself. All I did was scoop them into the pan and put them in and out of the oven. Definitely a good recipe to make with your kids!
-The Baker
yield: 10 full size muffins; 32 mini muffins
MUFFIN BATTER:
- 3/4 C Sugar
- 1 Egg
- 1 1/2 C All-Purpose Flour
- 2 t Baking Powder
- 1/4 t Salt
- 1/4 t Pumpkin Pie Spice
- 1/4 C Vegetable Oil
- 3/4 C Milk
- 1 t Vanilla Extract
- preheat oven to 350 F
- spray muffin tin
- in a mixing bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light and creamy
- in a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and Pumpkin Pie Spice
- pour dry ingredients into egg mixture and stir to combine
- add oil, milk and vanilla
- scoop batter into mini muffin pan; fill about 3/4 full
- bake for 15 mins, until a toothpick comes out clean
- pop out of the pan while still warm so they don't get soggy
- 4 oz Butter, melted
- 3/4 C Sugar, for rolling
- melt butter and pour remaining sugar into a small bowl
- while muffins are still warm, dip them in the melted butter, and then immediately roll them in the sugar
- cool and dry on a rack