sweet potato doughnut muffins

Seattle is a good doughnut town. In most coffee shops, you can find Top Pot doughnuts or Mighty-O doughnuts. However tasty, those doughnuts are usually an occasional treat. Doughnut muffins. on the other hand, I could eat every week. I have been seeing more and more recipes using doughnut pans lately. No hot oil or frying? Sounds like a much more pleasant Sunday morning to me. However, living in a small studio really make storage difficult and I was reluctant to make room for another pan. Then I remembered about the delicious doughnut muffins from the Downtown Bakery and Creamery in Healdsburg, California. Light, fluffy, and coated in cinnamon sugar, these doughnut muffins were almost as delicious as regular cake doughnuts and definitely better than your average muffin.

This is definitely a fall recipe. And it includes sweet potato! A vegetable! So go ahead and eat another one.

Sweet Potato Doughnut Muffins

adapted from Oh She Glows

To make this completely vegan, use vegan butter, aka Earth Balance. If you are not concerned about that, feel free to use buttermilk instead of the nondairy milk.

6 Tbsp milk (i used almond) + 1/2 tsp vinegar, mix and let rest for a couple of minutes. Or you can also use 5 Tbsp milk + 1 Tbsp yogurt.

1/2 cup mashed sweet potato (about 1 small sweet potato. I microwaved it until tender, peeled, and mashed it with a fork)

1/4 c sugar

2 tbsp brown sugar

3 tbsp applesauce

2 tbsp butter, melted

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup ap flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp nutmeg

dash ground cloves

1/2 tsp salt

Cinnamon sugar to coat (start with about 1/3 cup sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon)

melted butter (start with a couple of tablespoons)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease your muffin tin well. Note, this recipe made 8 muffins in a standard tin for me.

In a bowl, combine the milk+vinegar, sweet potato, sugars, applesauce, vanilla, and butter. In another bowl, combine the flours. baking powder and soda, spices, and salt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold to combine. Be sure not to overmix! Portion out in the prepared muffin tin. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out dry. These bake up pretty quickly, start checking in around 13-15 minutes. As soon as the muffins are cool enough to handle, remove from the pan and brush lightly with melted butter and roll in the cinnamon sugar. Serve right away, but these are pretty tasty cold too.

blueberry cornmeal muffins

i generally avoid muffins at most bakeries.  they are often too cake like and much too sweet for breakfast.  muffins were also one of the first things that i started the bake in high school and after all this time, this is the muffin that i always want to bake.  if i am eating a pastry for breakfast, i generally want it to be on the healthy side.  so this muffin is whole grain, and could potentially be free of refined sugar.  this is a blueberry muffin with a banana base so it is very moist without too much added fat.  i also think a strusel topping makes any sort of baked good so i wanted to include one here. this strusel used walnuts as the base so even though it is definitly not low fat, it is full of healthy fats.  each batch also usually make 10 or 11 muffins and not the usual 12 so act fast or they will be gone soon.

another image is here.

blueberry cornmeal muffins with walnut strusel

adapted from feeding the healthy vegetarian family by ken haedrich

this was one of my first and truly beloved cookbooks.  it has been about 8 years (!) since i bought it and i still refer to about once a month.  even though i was only cooking for myself most of time, haedrich uses easy to find ingredients and familiar flavors that please most people.  if you are just starting out vegetarianism or just want more plant- based meals, i highly recommend this book.

1 1/2 large very ripe bananas

1 egg

1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil

1/3 cup honey or maple syrup or packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

about 1/2 cup milk of your choice

1 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup yellow cornmeal

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup, maybe a little bit more fresh or frozen blueberries

preheat oven to 400 degrees and line or butter a muffin tin.

mash the banana in a bowl until smooth.  i find that heating the banana up in the microwave a bit helps.  mix in the sweetner of your choice, oil, and egg, vanilla, and milk.  in another bowl, whisk together the whole wheat pastry flour, cornmeal, baking powder and soda, and salt.  remove about a tablespoon or two of the flour mixture and toss the blueberries with it.  this prevents blueberry sinkage.  make a well in the dry ingredient bowl and stir in the wet ingredients just until combined.  do not overmix!  gently fold in the blueberries.  divide the batter into the muffin tin and top with streusel of your choice.  bake about 20-25 minutes.  test with a toothpick.  cool the muffins in the tin for a couple of minutes and then transfer to a rack.

walnut streusel

1/4 cup packed brown sugar.  i bet maple sugar would be super tasty in this, although it is super expensive.

1/4 cup oats

1 tsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

about 1 1/2 cups walnuts

1 1/2 to 2 tbsp vegetable oil

in the blender or food processor, pulse the brown sugar, oats, cinnamon, and salt together until the oats are chopped pretty fine.  add the walnuts and pulse about another 4 to 10 seconds to chop the nuts roughly.  drizzle in the oil while pulsing a bit more until the mixture comes together.  this is very good on muffins and coffee cakes and also very very good on oatmeal.  you can also make this with pecans if you do not care for walnuts.