Doughnuts, only not. And putting my stamp on things

I have two things today! First up is the hand carved rubber stamp I purchased from Brown Pigeon on Etsy. It's a representation of my logo in a 4in square stamp and I love it.


Mynah insisted on joining the picture.

Meagan does great work and I received the stamp a mere 12 days after I initiated conversation about the design and what would be possible.

It's a big, beautiful stamp that I intend to use on my shopping bags for festivals. I still need to decide on what kind of pigment ink stamp pad to get. I'm thinking that rainbow might be the most fun but it will depend on how expensive the pads are and how visible the finished image will be on the brown paper of the bags.

The other half of today's post is Doughnut Muffins. Or, in my case, Doughnut Hole Muffins. Picture, recipe and chitchat after the jump.


A bit of background, today was the day that my brother and his family left to return to Shanghai after spending the summer "home". This happened to coincide with one of the only nights it's been cool enough to turn off the ac and actually bake. The whole family has a fondness for doughnuts.

Meanwhile, late last night I saw a post on the Pioneer Woman blog about muffins that taste like donuts and immediately wanted them ALL. Clearly, this meant that I had to make the muffins and bring some as airplane food for my brother and his family. It made sense to me last night, what can I say?

As usual, I changed a few little things. So I present....


Doughnut Hole Muffins - makes about 36 mini-muffins or 12 regular muffins. The source recipe.
1 3/4c flour (245g, I used whole wheat)
1 1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt
1/2tsp nutmeg (freshly grated is deliciously fragrant)
1/2tsp cinnamon
3/4c sugar (150g, I think this is a lot of sugar for muffins, but these are supposed to taste like doughnuts, so I kept it)
1/3 cups oil
1 large egg
3/4c Milk

cinnamon sugar coating: The cinnamon sugar is increased by 1/2 for the mini-muffins because of the increased surface area. I reduced the quantity of butter a little as it turned out to be far too much.
3tbsp butter - melted
1/2c sugar (100g)
1.5tbsp cinnamon (that's 1tbsp + 1.5tsp; it's a lot of cinnamon, reduce this quantity as desired.)

Preheat the oven to 350°F and lightly grease the muffin tins.

Mix all the dry ingredients together. Mix all the wet ingredients together. When the oven is preheated, pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined. It should be lumpy and messy.

Spoon the batter into the muffin cups and bake for about 15min or until they're done. They'll be springy and dry to the touch.

Take them out of the oven and let them sit for 5min or so until they're cool enough to handle but still warm. Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a bowl until evenly combined.

While the muffins are still warm, gently pull one out of the tin. Dip the top of the muffin into the melted butter and then press it into the cinnamon sugar. Then roll the rest of the muffin into the cinnamon sugar. The moisture from the muffin itself will cause just enough of the sugar to stick to the sides and bottom. Set aside to cool and do the rest, one by one.

I find these muffins sweet enough without the cinnamon sugar. They definitely taste like an old fashioned cake doughnut with the coating, however. The key to capturing that flavor is the nutmeg. I think in the future I will make these without the cinnamon sugar, and possibly cutting the sugar in the batter itself down to 1/2c. They'd be a tasty little snack without being quite such a sugar bomb. I fully appreciate how much easier it is to bake muffins than to fry doughnuts, however. So these will be made again.

I also did a normal sized batch of blueberry muffins using this recipe as a base. I cut the sugar down to 1/4c, added 1c of fresh blueberries, and left off the cinnamon sugar. Increased the baking time to 20-25min and they came out perfect.