Cinnamon Sugar & Buttermilk Baked Donut-Muffins

      I had a lot of extra buttermilk to use, so I decided to make buttermilk baked donuts. Unfortunately, my donut pan has gone missing, so I made donut-muffins instead. This recipe made 12 mini muffins and 12 standard size muffins.

      I got this recipe from a blog called Clara Persis.  I’ve never bought a vanilla bean in my life, so I skipped that part. I also cheated and used salted butter and omitted the extra salt, which seemed to work fine.  As an experiment, I mixed some cocoa powder in the last bit of batter, which didn’t make a huge difference but was pretty good.

Cinnamon Sugar & Buttermilk Baked Donuts / Muffins

Makes approximately 12 donuts

For the donut

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1 ¼ cups buttermilk (or whole milk)
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract

For the topping

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°. Spray the donut or muffin pan with cooking spray or rub with canola oil.

Sift together the dry ingredients for the donut. In a separate bowl whisk together the wet ingredients. Pour the wet into the dry and mix until just combined. Fill the wells of the donut or muffin pan 3/4 of the way with batter.  Bake for 17 minutes until golden brown and a tooth pick comes out clean.  I took out my mini muffins after about 13 minutes, but they were a bit undercooked. The regular sized muffins took about 21 minutes. Let rest in pan for another 5 minutes and gingerly loosen them from the pan.

Set up a bowl for your melted butter, and another for you cinnamon sugar mixture.  Dip the donut first in the butter on both sides, and then in the cinnamon sugar. I dipped just the tops of the muffins, but sugar still stuck to the whole muffin.