Mindy Carlson

My sons LOVE cinnamon muffins. Most kids like blueberry or chocolate chip, but not my kids. Cinnamon is the way to their hearts at breakfast.

I have not had good luck with homemade muffins.  I can bake almost anything and have it be scrumptious, but not muffins.  They turn into little dense baseballs and require a quart of milk to wash down.  E, the muffin connoisseur, refuses to eat them.  If the muffin wasn’t made from a box mix he is very reluctant to try it and is 90% sure he won’t like it.

My Mom sent me the local country church’s cookbook – Bake and Smile Roseville Style. It is full of traditional crowd-pleasing recipes.  I mostly have baked up the dessert recipes (which fill 40 pages of a  152 page book), but decided that if I was going to find a muffin recipe that was sure to work it was going to be there.

I found a few recipes for apple and cinnamon muffins and so, naturally, I decided to modify one (by Mrs. Bonita Staudt) to be more cinnamon-y than apple-y.  And here’s what I can up with….

• 1/2 c. butter, very soft
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 T vanilla  (yes, T = Tablespoon)
• 1 c. applesauce, plain
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 c. flour
• 1 T cinnamon
• 2 tsp allspice

Preheat oven to 350*F.   Grease a 12-cup muffin pan.

Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add the egg and the vanilla and blend together thoroughly.  Heat the applesauce, but do not boil.  Stir the baking soda into the hot applesauce – there will be a fizzing reaction that is important to the lightness and fluffiness of the muffins – and then add this to the butter mixture.  Then add the flour, cinnamon, and allspice.  Blend very well.  Fill greased muffin tins 2/3 full.  Bake for 20-25 minutes.  This will make at least 12 muffins depending on how full you fill the tins.

These baked up beautifully, as you can see.  The cinnamon is very pronounced without being overwhelming.  The applesauce keeps them moist and also gives them a hint of apple that softens the bite of the cinnamon (but, SHHHH, don’t tell my kids they have apple in them! They seem to think putting apple in muffins is “gross”.)

E gave these 2 big thumbs up.  H, the 3 year old, also loved them.  They are torn between finishing them off for snack today or saving them for breakfast tomorrow.  Personally, I don’t expect the remaining muffins to make it through the day.

These from-scratch muffins didn’t take me any longer than the box kind.  I still intend to keep Mrs. Crocker’s and Mr. Hines’s wonderful products in my cupboard, but I am also very glad I have some fresh-bake options.