These cinnamon sugar muffins are sweet but not too sweet — perfect for starting your day with! Or ending your day with. They’re amazing as a dessert-y lil side with a full breakfast, or on their own with a cup of coffee. If you’ve never had French breakfast puffs before, they taste like a snickerdoodle cookie but, you know, shaped like a muffin.
This recipe is insanely easy and is perfect for making with children or teens. Let’s get to it!
French Breakfast Puffs Ingredients:
Using the ingredients below, you should end up with one dozen (12) cinnamon sugar muffins once you’re done baking.
Dry
- 1 ½ cups flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
Wet
- 1 slightly beaten egg
- ½ cup milk
- 1/3 cup oil (I use corn oil)
- Optional: A tiny splash of vanilla extract! If you’re really feeling the snickerdoodle vibe.
Topping
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ cup melted butter (1 stick)
Important: You Need a Muffin Pan for This!
This is probably a “no brainer” for most folks but, if you’re like I am (and I suspect you probably are at least a little bit or you wouldn’t be here), there’s a chance you might get overly ambitious to make something and then realize too late that you don’t actually have the correct tools to successfully complete the mission. There’s nothing quite like having a mixing bowl full of gooey batter ready to be poured into cupcake liners only to realize you don’t actually have any in your kitchen cupboard. Or that you regrettably don’t own a muffin tin.
So, BEFORE YOU START, make sure you have muffin/cupcake liners (also called baking cups) on hand and that you actually own a muffin/cupcake pan!
If you don’t own a muffin pan, I recommend the one in the image above: Wilton’s Perfect Results Non-Stick 12-Cup Muffin Pan (Amazon affiliate link). It’s sturdy, it cooks everything evenly, it’s easy to clean, and it comes with 150 liners!
French Breakfast Puffs Baking Instructions:
STEP ONE:
Whisk all of the dry ingredients together. I use a fork to do this since handwashing batter off of an actual whisk is a pain during the cleanup process but you’re free to use a real whisk if you wanna be fancy.
STEP TWO:
Preheat your oven to 350° Fahrenheit.
STEP THREE:
Measure out your milk. Add your egg into the milk. Gently stir/beat it (again, I usually use a fork but you can use a whisk or an egg beater or whatever if you prefer, I guess?) until the egg is mixed into the milk. Beat the egg just enough for it to not look like an egg anymore, you know what I mean? But don’t beat it too much or it’ll mess with the overall texture of your cinnamon sugar muffins.
Fun Fact: If you overbeat eggs, the egg whites break down and get really watery and they can really mess you up when you try to mix them into your French breakfast puffs or your cake or mousse or whatever. Don’t bully the egg!!
STEP FOUR:
Pour your milk and egg mixture into your bowl containing the dry ingredients. Measure out and add the oil in there as well.
STEP FIVE:
Mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Juuuuuuuuuuuuust enough for it all to stick together and look even. Don’t worry about lumps — for this recipe lumps are GOOD! So long as they’re wet/moist-looking lumps, it’s totally fine. Those lumps are actually what will give your cinnamon sugar muffins little pockets of “air” and give them a nice delicate fluffiness.
Note: If you’d prefer your French breakfast puffs to be dense (some folks do!) then, by all means, mash those lumps into oblivion. You do you and all that. Personally, since I eat these at breakfast — as the name implies — I don’t like them to weigh me down by being too heavy-feeling.
STEP SIX:
If you haven’t already, put muffin liners in your muffin pan. Then, spoon batter into each of the cups. You should end up with 12 evenly-filled muffin cups.
Pop ‘em in the oven and bake for 20 minutes at 350°!
STEP SEVEN:
Pull your muffin pan out of the oven and let your French breakfast puffs cool. Ideally, you want them to be still warm but not HOT, y’know? You’re going to be holding onto them with your hands and I don’t want you getting burned!!
Meanwhile, mix your topping by putting cinnamon and sugar (mixed) into a bowl and melted butter into another bowl. (If you don’t know how to melt butter: I usually just take the stick – which is a half-cup of butter – and put it into a microwave-safe bowl and then zap it in the microwave for about 30-45 seconds).
STEP EIGHT:
Finally, once your French breakfast puffs are cool enough to touch, grab ‘em by their bottoms and dip them into the melted butter and then into the cinnamon-sugar mixture! The goal here is to coat the warm muffins with butter all over their delicious muffin tops and then use that butter to essentially “glue” a bunch of cinnamon and sugar to them — kinda like a cinnamon-sugar donut or Cinnamon Toast Crunch or something.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm… Enjoy!!
A Word of Warning to Avoid Temptation:
Yes, you CAN unwrap your breakfast muffins (take them out of their muffin liners), dunk the ENTIRE muffin in butter, and then roll it around in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. And, yes, it IS delicious! It’s also SUPER FATTENING! Like… dangerously fattening!
Here’s the thing: The baked muffin tops on these French puffs are solid enough to not soak up TOO much butter… but the muffin bottoms remain very porous and those thirsty buggers will drink up butter like it’s the first water they’ve come across after being lost in the Sahara for a week. Instead of one stick of butter for a dozen French breakfast puffs, you’ll end up using closer to four sticks. That’s… “okay” if you’re trying to show off for a party and you’re each eating one, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe two; but if you’re eating these alone, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Even if you’re in peak physical condition, eating that much fat and sugar is gonna make you feel pretty gross. I just wanted to mention that you technically “can” do it this way because I know you were probably considering it. I know this because I considered it. And then I did it. It tasted divine and then it hit my guts and bounced. Which makes sense considering ONE stick of butter has 92 grams of fat (and you’re only supposed to eat about 50-60 grams of fat per DAY if you have a 1500-2000 calorie diet). Learn from Teen Lauren’s mistakes and treat yourself responsibly! Maintain your gallbladder’s integrity.
French Breakfast Puffs Recipe Backstory:
Way back in 1999, I had Home Economics as my elective class for my second semester of 8th grade. I absolutely loathed it. The teacher, Ms. K, was truly awful and I couldn’t stand her (and that’s very rare for me to say as I tend to get along with just about everyone, from pastors to porn stars).
Anyway, she was always making us cook disgusting garbage. If I’d been in that class for more than one semester, I probably would’ve come out hating food in general as well as cooking. Bleh! Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut… she did have two recipes that were ALMOST good. This was one of them. Kind of.
Ms. K’s original recipe used melted shortening (soy) instead of corn oil, far less nutmeg, and margarine (also soy) instead of butter. And that last one is what REALLY ticked me off at the time. Like, “Really, Debbie? You’re going to come in here telling us to make a ‘French’ dish and then NOT use butter?? Seriously?” Also, as you know from previous recipes, I’m allergic to soybeans and her reliance on soy in her recipes made the class even more unbearable for me — I couldn’t even test/taste over half of the crud she ordered us to cook!
So, I took her “almost good” recipe and tinkered with it until it was great. And now I’m sharing it with YOU! Now you’ll never have to take an 8th grade Home Economics class. You’re welcome!
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