These muffins are no joke. I had seen the recipe on a few different websites and was surprised at what a reaction they were getting from people considering how simple the recipe looked. Sometimes these things don’t live up to the hype, but I have to admit that these are really good.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between one of these muffins and a donut in a blind taste test, but it’s a great alternative, especially since you probably have most of the required ingredients in your kitchen right now and you probably don’t have donuts. Well, we don’t at least. What we DO have is 5 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies that Justin ordered from one of his co-workers. Oh golly.

Back to the muffins! Start off by combining your dry ingredients in one bowl and your wet ingredients in another bowl.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir just to combine. Spray a muffin pan with non-stick cooking spray (or use cupcake liners) and fill each about 2/3 of the way (about 1/4 cup of batter).

I don’t even know why I bothered writing that, since I obviously don’t know how to properly distribute batter. I’ve mentioned before that it’s a bit of an issue for me, but I wasn’t even close this time.

10. That’s the best I could do? Solid work.

Now I went rogue here a little and decided to try something different. I wanted to see if you could just sprinkle the batter with cinnamon and sugar and then bake them and have a similar outcome as baking them plain and then coating them in melted butter/cinnamon and sugar as instructed in the original recipe. I decided to try my method on half and the butter method on the other half and see which came out better.

Pop them into the oven for 15-20 minutes (I did 17 and they cooked through but weren’t dry).

Oh hey there, 10 muffins. What a perfect number of muffins that is, huh? I agree, 12 IS a crowd.

From here (if you’re going the butter route), melt the butter and mix the cinnamon and sugar and remove the muffins from the pan while they’re still hot. Brush the top of the muffin with melted butter (or just dunk it right in there)

and then dip the top of the muffin into the cinnamon and sugar.

Justin and I taste-tested both versions and we agreed that both were really good and that the butter wasn’t completely necessary, but that it did give the muffin a nice texture and it held on to more of the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Justin was leaning more towards the butter version whereas I could have gone either way. If I was going to make them again, I would probably omit it but that might be because I accidentally flung butter all over everything and myself during the process, so I might just be jaded.

Either way, they were delicious.

Enjoy!

Muffins That Taste Like Donuts
original recipe found here

Makes: 12 (so they say) / Prep time: 10 minutes / Cook time: 15-20 minutes

• 1-3/4 cup flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/3 cup oil
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon in one bowl. Combine the oil, sugar, egg and milk in another. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir just to combine. If you are omitting the butter from the topping, combine the cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle the mixture evenly over the batter. Spray a muffin pan with non-stick cooking spray (or use paper liners) and fill each about 2/3 of the way (using about 1/4 cup of batter in each) and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove the muffins from the pan while they are still hot. If you are using the butter as a topping, melt it and brush it over the top of each muffin and then dip the muffin into the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Allow to cool.