Cinnamon Sugar Mini-Muffins

Here’s a recipe that calls for ingredients you probably already have in your refrigerator and cupboard. Beware though, once you bring these little balls of deliciousness to a pot luck brunch or coffee hour, you’ll be required to bring them again and again!

If there’s a “secret” to these little guys, it’s very simple: butter and sugar. They don’t just contain the two ingredients, they’re dipped in butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar. Obviously not “health food,” but they’re little. And you’ll only eat one… right? Thanks to my friend Shawn for this recipe. I look forward to visits to her home (on a beautiful ranch in Arizona) for many reasons, but delicious food lovingly prepared is right up there.

Cinnamon Sugar Mini-Muffins 

For the muffins:

1/3 cup (5 1/3 tablespoons) butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg, room temperature

1 1/2 cups flour (6 1/2 ounces)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 cup milk, room temperature

For the topping:

6 tablespoons melted butter (3/4 of a stick)

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

(You can get away with less of all three topping ingredients, but you’ll need plenty!)

Here’s what the muffin ingredients look like (minus the milk). The “room temperature” part of the instructions isn’t absolutely necessary, but baking is a big part science, and room temperature ingredients go together better (for some scientific reason, of course…). The butter, though, must be softened, so why not just set out the butter, egg and milk on your counter about an hour before you start putting the recipe together? You can do it! (By the way, “softened” butter is not “melted” or mushy — it holds its shape but is not refrigerator-hard.)

directions

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. (Make sure the rack is in the middle position.)
2. In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. (Let it go for a few minutes on medium-high. You really can’t over mix at this stage. You can also use a hand-held mixer for this recipe.) Add the egg and mix well.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients to combine. (Flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg)
4. Gradually add the flour mixture and the milk, alternating in about three or four batches (a little flour, then a little milk, etc.), mixing well.

Here’s the last of the milk going in. See how light and creamy the batter looks? That’s from beating!

5. Spray a 24-muffin mini-muffin pan with baking spray, and divide the batter as evenly as possible. I use a cookie scoop for this task. If you run out of batter before you’ve filled all the indentations, just use a small spoon to “borrow” batter from overly full spaces. (I always end up doing this.) Of course, if you’re not a perfectionist you can simply bake them as is. Best to add a bit of water to any unfilled spaces.

Here’s the muffin tin ready for the oven. Yep, I had to “borrow” to fill the last two spaces. (Don’t have a mini-muffin pan? You can make twelve regular-sized muffins, it’s just a little harder to dunk them in butter!)

6. Bake for 12-14 minutes (20-25 minutes for regular-size muffins).  I always set my timer for the earliest time and check to see if they’re ready. You can always pop them back in the oven for another minute or two.

Here they are baked to perfection. Notice that the tops aren’t browned, but the sides are. That’s just right. Tip one muffin on its side to check. (You can also cool muffins in the pan by tipping them up, allowing any steam to escape. Or, of course, you can transfer them to a cooling rack to cool.)

7. When the muffins are completely cool (which will take 20-30 minutes for the mini guys), melt the butter. I melt butter in the microwave. A few minutes on reduced power (20 or 30 percent) does the job without splattering the butter all over the inside of your microwave. I do it in a one cup pyrex measuring cup which makes the dipping process easiest. You can certainly melt the butter in a pan on your stove top (low heat and keep an eye on it!), but I recommend pouring it into a measuring cup for ease of muffin dipping.

8. Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl. Dip each muffin in the melted butter (submerge it ~ all the way!) allow excess butter to drip off, then roll it in the cinnamon sugar and place it back on the cooling rack on a piece of wax paper on your counter to set. (If you used the tip-in the-pan method for cooling your muffins, you won’t want to dirty a cooling rack at this point!) Half way through the rolling (after 12 muffins), I like to “refresh” the cinnamon sugar (i.e. get rid of the lumps) by passing it through a sieve, like this:

Here’s the mini-muffin “spa treatment.” Now you know why they taste so darn good!:

Butter Bath

Cinnamon Sugar Scrub