Buttermilk Donut Muffins

I swear, winter has just plain given up this year. It's 60 degrees outside today! For crying out loud!! Oh well. It's hard to be angry when it's just so gorgeous out... I'm still holding out hope for one more snowstorm! Make it a big one! Shut down the schools!!

As I mentioned yesterday, I picked my recipes this week all just for fun. I was still craving the donuts from my local grocery store, but wasn't really prepared to go all-in and start frying up homemade donuts, so I looked for donut muffins! Could I make a muffin to satisfy my donut craving?? Turns out the answer, of course, is yes! Anyone surprised??

Buttermilk Donut Muffins (inspired by Cooking Classy)
Printable Recipe

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup + 2 Tb buttermilk
10 Tb butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Glaze
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2-3 Tb milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and grease/line a 12 cup muffin tin.

Whisk flour, baking powder & soda, salt, and spices together in a medium bowl, and set it aside. In a small bowl (or glass measuring cup, which is easiest!) combine milk and buttermilk and set aside

Beat butter and sugar together until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Mix in vanilla. Add dry ingredients in three batches, alternating with half portions of the milk mixture, mixing until just combined after each. 

Spoon into prepared muffins tin, each cup should be almost, but not quite full. If not glazing, sprinkle tops generously with sugar. Bake for 13-18 minutes, until muffins are very lightly browned. Allow to cool before glazing. 

Make your glaze by whisking the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla together in a small bowl. Dip the top of each muffin in the glaze, let a bit of the extra glaze drizzle off, then set on a piece of wax/parchment paper to set. (You can also skip the glaze, and top with streusel, plain sugar, sprinkles, or dip the tops in melted butter and cinnamon sugar!)

Since my favorite donuts are the ones just sprinkled with sugar, I left half of mine just like that. And they are scrumptious!! 

But for prettiness sake, I glazed the other half! I actually ran out of powdered sugar yesterday, and the Geologist and I were making 4-5 dozen muffins for his office... luckily I remembered the packet of strawberry icing sugar my dear friend Marie sent me! You saved the day! According to Joe, these strawberry frosted ones are "even better than cupcakes!"

But back to the muffins themselves. Top them how you will, to me they are perfect. Not super sweet, loaded with nutmeg, moist and fluffy from the buttermilk! They're sooo good!

The outside even gets a bit crisp (if you don't bake them in liners) so you could almost imagine they really are donuts! Now, when we doubled this recipe, we ended up with an extra dozen, so it may make more than 1 dozen. Oh darn! :)

By the way, I took new photos of my Lemon Blueberry Muffins, the very first recipe I ever posted, and the one with the worst pictures, so I have now replaced them! Hopefully I'll be able to replace all those first few dozen recipes at some point. :)