Assortment of Muffins
By Cat, Jun 2008 (Photo, right, from Wikimedia Commons)
- See also: 1. Breads & Muffins Menu; 2. Grains, Flours & Starches (About) Menu; 3. Sugar and Other Sweeteners Menu; 4. Spelt vs Wheat in Baked Goods & Pasta
This wonderful recipe is reminiscent of ‘doughnut holes’, but far easier to make – and doesn’t involve frying! After baking, they are topped with butter and cinnamon-sugar….yum! Or you could top them with my Crumb or Nut-Crumble Topping for Muffins.
‘Doughnut’ Muffins
I’ve adapted my presoak version from the original by Kathleen Stewart in Fine Cooking (1). The original uses 1 3/4 cups sugar; I prefer to sweeten with stevia, but provide instructions for using Rapadura or other sugar; I do not recommend artificial sweeteners such as Splenda.
Everyone has a different idea of how much butter & cinnamon-sugar should be on the finished muffins. I recommend starting with half the butter and half the cinnamon-sugar to get an idea of how many muffins that will accommodate, then make up just enough additional butter and cinnamon-sugar so that you don’t waste much.
The original recipe makes 24 muffins, but you should only fill one rack at a time, and my oven rack will only hold two 6-muffin tins, so I reduced to half., for 12 muffins. You could use mini-muffin pans for about 24 bite-size muffins.
I’ve not tested this yet, so am uncertain about some of the quantities.
Ingredients & Equipment:
- Day before, Soaking the flour:
- 2 ¾ cups whole wheat pastry flour
- 3 Tbsp buttermilk or yogurt, plus regular milk to make 1 cup; or 1 cup clabbered milk (clabbered by adding 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to the milk)
- warm filtered water as needed
- Next day, Wet Ingredients
- 6 oz (1 ½ cubes) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 ¾ cups Rapadura or other cane sugar (or 2 Tbsp honey, Grade-B maple syrup or Rapadura sugar plus ½ – ⅔ tsp stevia extract powder)
- ½ tsp real vanilla extract (optional)
- 2 eggs, beaten
- Dry Ingredients
- ¼ cup unbleached white flour
- 2 ½ tsp aluminum-free baking powder
- 1 ¼ tsp baking soda
- 3 tsp unrefined sea salt (or less)
- ¼ – ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- For Dipping
- 4 oz (1 cube) unsalted butter, plus more as needed
- 1 cup Rapadura sugar (or ½ cup each Rapadura and white cane sugar)
- 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
- Equipment
- medium bowl
- stand mixer fitted with paddle blade and large bowl, or wooden spoon and large bowl
- small saucepan (to melt butter for dipping)
- shallow bowl
- muffin tins for 12 muffins
Method:
- Soak Flour: Stir milk mixture or clabbered milk into the flour in large bowl until well blended. Add warm water as needed to make it stir-able, but don’t overdo.
- Press a sheet of waxed paper against the flour mixture, to cover entire surface, then cover with a kitchen towel. Let sit on counter 12 hours or overnight. Next day, scrape any batter stuck to the paper back into the bowl.
- Next day: Arrange oven rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 24 muffin cups (or fill with muffin papers).
- Sift dry ingredients and set aside.
- Cream butter and sweetener(s) until smooth, about 5 minutes. beat in vanilla, if using. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until just mixed.
- Stir in presoaked mixture, just until mixed.
- Fold sifted dry ingredients into the batter, just until moistened.
- Scoop batter into greased muffin cups so that the top of the batter is even with the rim of the cup (a #16 ice-cream scoop is perfect size for scooping). Fill any empty cups with water.
- Bake until firm to the touch, 30 – 35 minutes. Remove pan from oven to cooling rack.
- Finish
- Melt butter for dipping mixture. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a shallow bowl.
- When muffins are just cool enough to handle, remove them from the tin and dip them into the melted butter – or brush them all over with the butter. Then roll them in the cinnamon sugar.
References:
- Fine Cooking recipe, originally by Kathleen Stewart (finecooking.com/recipes/doughnut_muffins.aspx)
