French Breakfast Puffs are the perfect cinnamon sugar muffins! A light and airy muffin on the inside, it’s coated in a generous helping of butter and cinnamon sugar. Bake up a batch of these easy cinnamon sugar donut muffins for a sweet start to your day.
I love that these easy cinnamon muffins are called, “puffs.” Doesn’t a puff sound like more fun to eat than a plain ol’ muffin?
At the end of the day though, French Breakfast Puffs are essentially a straightforward muffin dipped in butter and coated with cinnamon sugar. They’re simple, sweet and completely delightful.
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If you like cinnamon toast, you’re going to be all about this French Breakfast Puffs recipe. I love the taste of warm butter with little crystals of sugar and cinnamon on these muffins.
I’ve always been a big fan of cinnamon-sugar everything. From Cinnamon Sugar Palmiers to Snickerdoodle Bars, chances are if you found a way to sprinkle something with cinnamon and sugar, I’m going to love it.
Even this Cinnamon Roll Layer Cake!
It’s like eating breakfast for dessert.
French Breakfast Puffs are no exception. The crisp cinnamon sugar coating gives way to a buttery fluffy muffin, perfect for morning or an anytime snack.
What’s extra cool about this cinnamon muffin recipe is that it requires no glaze or crumb topping. We kept it simple to let that glorious cinnamon sugar flavor shine!
What do I need?
The ingredients for French Breakfast Puffs will be familiar if you baked any kind of muffin before!
Here’s what you’ll need for the muffins:
- Flour
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Nutmeg
- Sugar
- Shortening
- Eggs
- Milk
Surprised there’s no cinnamon in the batter? I was too. It turns out the nutmeg gives the muffins a little extra dimension of flavor that beautifully complements the cinnamon sugar coating.
Speaking of the cinnamon sugar, here’s what you need for coating the baked muffins:
- Unsalted butter
- Granulated sugar
- Cinnamon
How do you make Easy Cinnamon Muffins from Scratch?
This muffin recipe starts with a simple muffin batter. Mix the ingredients together, then divide the batter into a muffin tin. Bake the muffins until they’re golden brown.
After baking the muffins, comes the fun part. Each breakfast puff gets individually rolled in melted butter then generously dusted with cinnamon and sugar.
When I first learned about French Breakfast Puffs, I thought this sounded like a lot of work for something as simple as a muffin. Isn’t the beauty of muffins that you can just bake and go?
Turns out it hardly took any time at all to give the finished muffins a roll through the butter. The taste is well worth it.
Kids love to help rolling the muffins in the sugar, so feel free to recruit a few tiny assistants too!
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These French Breakfast Puffs smelled so good while they were baking that I couldn’t resist popping one in into my mouth straight out of the oven. It was delicious all on its own, but with the butter and cinnamon sugar? Sublime.
I found it difficult to eat just one. Between my family and I, these French Breakfast Puffs disappeared in record time.
Muffin Recipes
If it’s muffin recipes you’re after, you’ve come to the right place. Dairy-Free Pumpkin Muffins and Cinnamon Streusel Muffins are perfect for fall but too good not to bake all year long. If you love streusel, you’ll also love these Apple Streusel Muffins.
Do you like fruity muffins? Check out these Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins and these Peach Streusel Muffins, too. (Can you tell I have kind of a thing for streusel?)
Most of my muffin recipes are freezer friendly, including today’s French Breakfast Puffs! Go ahead and make as many as your heart desires to pop in the freezer for busy mornings.
- Chocolate Banana Muffins
- Orange Ricotta Muffins
- Cherry Oatmeal Muffins
- Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Peanut Butter Banana Muffins
- Cinnamon Roll Muffins
Breakfast Recipes
When making these French Breakfast Puffs this weekend, pair them with my Denver Scrambled Breakfast Braid, Pear Cream Cheese Danish, this Quinoa Banana Bread or these Baked Eggs in Toast Cups. Then invite me over because that sounds like one fabulous breakfast!
My family loves sweets in the morning. These MILKY WAY Simply Caramel Bites Breakfast Rolls were a huge success. They’d be perfect to munch on with your coffee on a slow Saturday morning.
Even more breakfast recipes to make mornings better. . .
- Mexican Breakfast Casserole
- Breakfast Parfaits
- Cinnamon Peach Pancakes
- Banana Peanut Butter Chip Pancakes
- Baked Blueberry Waffles
- Baked Apple Cinnamon Pancake
- Dairy-Free Lemon Poppy Seed Waffles
- Cinnamon Rolls with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing
- 2-Ingredient Nutella Cinnamon Rolls
- Strawberry Nutella Crepes
French Breakfast Puffs
Equipment
- cooking spray
- 12-cup muffin tin
- Mixer
- Mixing bowls
- rubber spatula
Ingredients
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 cup sugar
- ⅔ cup shortening
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup milk
Coating
- 1 ½ cups sugar
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- 16 tablespoons unsalted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Prepare a 12-cup muffin tin by spraying it with cooking spray or greasing it with butter.
- Into a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg together.
- In a mixing bowl fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the shortening and sugar together.
- Beat in the eggs and combine well.
- Alternately, add the flour mixture and the milk, mixing thoroughly after each addition.
- Pour batter into muffin cups filling to about 2/3 full.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes, until lightly golden.
Coating
- In a medium bowl, melt the 2 sticks of butter.
- In another medium bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon for the coating.
- Dip the muffins into the butter, making sure to completely cover.
- Roll in cinnamon sugar.
Nutrition
This is an old Betty Crocker recipe that I first made back in the late 70s and still make it.
That’s awesome, Beth! Some recipes are just too good to do away with!
I missed you tonight but I’ll catch you next time your on I love watching your video’s
Looks good
Thanks, Chris!
Hi Lynn. I have made this also for 30 plus years but my recipe is pretty much a half recipe of this and yields 12 muffins also. Your recipe has 3 cups of flour in it so I think it makes more than 12 or very big muffins. It is very good though. Thanks for sharing with everyone.
Jeanne,
thanks for your comment!
I had never made these before and absolutely loved them, so I’ll probably be making them for the next 30 years!!
Hi Lynn. I’m in the UK, we don’t use shortening can I replace with butter/oil.
I love reading your recipes but find them hard to follow with cup measurements can you list in grams too please.
Thanks
Shereen, thanks for your comment.
You could probably replace the shortening with butter, but you’ll get a different outcome. I’d check out the original recipe on The Pioneer Woman’s website, Ree Drummond to see is she comments about using butter.
Also, because of time constraints, I only list my recipes in cups and tablespoons. You can do a Google search for converting them to grams and it will tell you exactly how much you need.
can we use butter instead of shortening?
Sidra,
good question. I haven’t made them with shortening, but you could try. I would check on Ree Drummond’s site, The Pioneer Woman, to see if she says anything about that as that’s where I found the recipe.
If you make them with shortening, please let me know how they turn out.
Hi
Alternative to shortening is butter.
Checked the comments on The Pioneer Woman – looks like plenty of people have tried it, and its worked out fine!
My mother made these when we were kids for Sunday breakast. They are delicous!!!!!!!
great recipe…pour half the batter in and then a dollop of fruit jam and then rest of mixture….jam donuts!