Dear Internet, I'm here to tell you about French puffs. They were a favorite in my house growing up, as evinced by the spatters of grease and ancient dried batter on that page of my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook.
It was my dad who, in a stroke of genius, thought of adding nutmeg to the batter.
I don't currently have access to the Betty Crocker cookbook of my youth, and I also wanted a recipe that didn't involve creaming a fat with the sugar (because I have maybe twenty minutes in which I can use both hands, and I like to maximize that time), which rules out not only Betty's recipe but also this delicious-sounding one from Smitten Kitchen.
So I searched for a simple muffin recipe using melted butter and found this one from Epicurious. Perfect. I changed it up a little, and because our current two muffin/cupcake pans are either dirty or have inkstains (curse you, adorable spring cupcake papers!) that haven't come off yet, I pulled out the individual bar pan (mine is similar to, but not exactly like, this one). You could certainly do this in a regular muffin pan, but I do think that the square cavities created more deliciously browned bottom surface area than a regular round-cavity pan would.
I melted some butter and mixed up some cinnamon and sugar while the muffins were baking. The baby demanded feeding then, so I left the actual dipping in butter/dredging in cinnamon sugar process to Jason, and he knocked it out of the park.
These came out amazing. If state fair mini doughnuts and muffins had a baby, this would be the result.
French Puffs
For the muffins:
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons grated nutmeg (ideally freshly grated)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup coconut milk
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 tablespoons butter
For the coating:
1 stick butter, melted
1 cup cinnamon-sugar
Preheat the oven to 375F.
Butter (or grease/spray with nonstick spray) your muffin tin, whatever the shape of its cavities. You don't want to use muffin/cupcake papers for this recipe, trust me.
Melt the coconut oil and butter; set aside.
Whisk together dry ingredients.
Combine milk with melted fats; whisk in egg.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid. Mix just until the flour is moistened (resist the temptation to keep mixing beyond that point; perfect muffin texture is dependent on the least possible amount of mixing, which Joy of Baking explains really well here).
Spoon the batter evenly into the tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes, testing for doneness at the end.
While the muffins are baking, melt the additional butter and mix your cinnamon-sugar blend. (It's hard to give an exact ratio for this, since it always varies a bit for me. It's approximately a teaspoon of cinnamon to every half-cup of sugar.)
Remove the muffins to a plate. Carefully (they'll still be quite hot) dip each muffin in melted butter and then roll in the cinnamon sugar until it's coated to your satisfaction.
Enjoy.
