Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins

When I was a kid my parents owned and operated a small pharmacy in Brooklyn, me and my brothers and sister were practically raised there. We have tons of old photos of my mom pregnant, with one of out of the four of us, behind the counter. Photos of us kids playing in the back room, or sleeping in a playpen. That old Brooklyn pharamacy has so many great memories for me.

My dad used to go to this one bakery in the neighborhood and get us the BEST sugar donuts. To this day when I think of the pharmacy I think of the donuts and vice versa.

The other day I was looking through a blog I had just come across, http://vanillakitchen.blogspot.com/ and came across this recipe for Sugar Donut Muffins. I knew immediately that I had to make these. I tweaked it a bit based on some of the suggestions on the blog and I loved them. So simple and the perfect reminder of our Brooklyn pharmacy.

I took it a step further by spreading Nutella on a few of these, giving it an extra kick of flavor.

Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins
adapted from http://vanillakitchen.blogspot.com/2009/01/sugar-donut-muffins.html

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 cups all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking power
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp cinnamon
Zest of ½ an orange
¼ cup plus 1 tbs vegetable oil
¾ cup plus 2 tbs buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

For topping:
4 tbs butter, melted
½ cup sugar, for rolling
1 tbs cinnamon, for rolling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a muffin tin with cooking spray or vegetable oil.
2. In a large bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light in color. Add in all the vegetable oil, all the buttermilk, vanilla extract and mix well.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, orange zest, cinnamon and nutmeg; add this to the wet mixture.Divide batter evenly into 12 muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.Bake for 15-18 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
4. While muffins are baking, melt butter in one bowl and in another bowl pour in the ½ cup sugar, plus 1tbs cinnamon.
5. When muffins are done, take muffin one by one and brush top of muffin with melted butter then dip into cinnamon sugar mixture. Cool on a wire rack.Makes 12 muffins.