French Breakfast Muffins

By lauramae

I never knew a muffin could be so exciting. So simple, yet so exciting. Am I alone in this lack of knowledge? Does everyone else on the planet know the awesomeness of a dang muffin, but forgot to fully inform me? Whatever the case, these are incredible and I really mean it. I don't know why they're "French" and I don't care; I don't why they're called "Breakfast" because a person really should eat them all day long, as far as I can tell. I just tilted my head back in ecstasy because I just had a little muffin flashback. Well, better than an acid flashback, I suppose. Anyway, eat these warm - when warm, they pretty much just melt in your mouth and it's heavenly.

Ingredients

• 1/3 c. butter, melted
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1 egg (preferably room temperature)
• 1 1/2 c. all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 c. milk
• Topping (option: cut topping in half*)
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. butter, melted
• 1 tsp. cinnamon

Details

Adapted from velvetlava.blogspot.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a medium-large bowl, sift together all dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and stir just until combined, but still a bit lumpy. Do NOT overmix; overmixing will ruin the texture of the finished muffins. Also? Don't overmix the batter. Finally, don't overmix.

Scoop batter into muffin tins that have sprayed with cooking spray. Using a large ice cream scoop, I got 8 medium-large muffins out of this batter; I think you could get 10-12 muffins by distributing the batter a little less generously.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until they just start to turn a bit golden at the edges.

For the topping, mix sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Place melted butter in another small bowl. Dip the warm muffins in melted butter (you can dip just the top, but it's even tastier to dip the whole muffin!), then dip/roll the muffin in cinnamon sugar.

*May have left-over topping; the extra topping can be used for dipping, while eating the muffins (oh my). Another option is to cut the topping ingredients in half. CONSUME, ENJOY, GO CRAZY!