French Breakfast Puffs

These light and fluffy little muffins are dipped in melted butter and then rolled in cinnamon and sugar. They taste like the best cake doughnut you’ve ever eaten and make a wonderful breakfast or late-night snack.

Recipe

Ingredients

PUFFS

⅓ cup (64g) vegetable shortening, room temperature

½ cup (100g) granulated sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1½ cups (213g) all-purpose flour

1½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup (4 oz) milk

AFTER BAKING...

6 oz (1½ sticks) salted butter, melted

1 cup (200g) sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Yield: 12 muffins or 30 mini-muffins

Prep Time: 10 min.

Bake Time: 20-25 min.

Total Time: 30-35 min.

Type of Recipe:
Muffins

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 12 muffin cups or 30 wells in a mini muffin pan.
Cream together the shortening and ½ cup sugar.
Add egg and vanilla and beat well. Set aside.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with milk.
Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. For the mini-muffins, I used a small cookie scoop. Bake at 350°F for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and toothpick inserted into middle of cupcake comes out clean. Bake mini-muffins 10-12 minutes.
While puffs are baking, melt the 6 ounces butter and place in a shallow bowl. Combine 1 cup sugar with the cinnamon and put in separate shallow bowl.
When puffs are taken from the oven, immediately roll each in the melted butter, then into the sugar-cinnamon mixture. Serve hot or cold.

Recipe Notes

Why shortening? Here’s why I prefer vegetable shortening in the batter. Vegetable shortening makes for a lighter, softer and more tender puff. That also means a taller, “puffier” puff. (Most vegetable shortening is now made with 0% trans fats.)
Although I haven’t made this recipe with butter, if you want to replace the shortening with butter, remember that shortening is 100% fat and contains no water. That means no steam is created during baking which effectively reduces gluten production. So if you do want to use butter, I would recommend adding 10mL (2 teaspoons) of water with the ⅓ cup of butter that you’re substituting for the shortening.