Easy French Breakfast Muffins

These French breakfast muffins are also called doughnut muffins, and one bite tells you why. Tender, lightly sweet, scented with nutmeg, and finished with a roll in melted butter and cinnamon-sugar that gives them a crackling fairground-doughnut crust.

The nutmeg is the secret. A quarter teaspoon is the difference between a plain muffin and one that tastes unmistakably like an old-school cake doughnut. Don’t skip it or substitute, this is the flavor signature of the recipe.

Vegetable shortening rather than butter in the batter is intentional. Shortening produces a lighter, more open crumb that doesn’t compete with the buttery cinnamon-sugar coating that goes on top. Save the butter for the rolling stage where it makes the biggest difference.

All-important: roll the muffins in butter and cinnamon-sugar IMMEDIATELY after they come out of the oven. Hot muffins absorb the butter and the sugar clings; cool muffins refuse to take the coating.

Pro Tips

• Fill muffin cups exactly two-thirds full. Overfilled cups produce muffins with flat, mushroom-shaped tops that won’t roll cleanly in the coating.
• Have the melted butter and cinnamon-sugar bowls set up and ready before the muffins come out of the oven. The window for hot rolling is about 60 seconds.
• Use a pastry brush instead of dunking if your muffins are delicate. Dipping a fragile muffin tears the top.
• Bake on the middle rack. Top racks brown the tops too fast, leaving the centers gummy.

Variations

• Add a pinch of cardamom along with the nutmeg for a more complex, warmly spiced muffin.
• Use brown butter instead of regular melted butter for the coating. The nutty, caramelized notes are extraordinary against cinnamon-sugar.
• Stir half a cup of fresh blueberries into the batter for a fruit-studded version (skip the cinnamon-sugar topping).