April muffin recipe: Cinnamon Roll Muffins

 

Photo from Jamie Cooks it Up

Again this month, I'm sneaking in just under the wire with a muffin recipe for April.  (As readers may remember, I've been trying a muffin recipe every month with an eye to next Christmas's kitchen gifts.) 

April has been just about as busy as March.  We have three family birthdays to celebrate in April -- our local daughter and two of her children -- for one thing, and of course there was Easter, and also a special Merger Sunday as our church merger became official.  My mother-in-law is safely settled in long-term care and is thriving, but it took so many people working on so many details for that to happen, and my hubby has been immersed in those details.   We have been trying to spend several days each week staying at the Christian camp where we've been helping with maintenance and other tasks.  We're also working on selling the last piece of property for my dad's trust.  It has all taken time!

Easter table at my daughter's home

So I surely count it a blessing to be able to duck into my actual kitchen this morning and try out a muffin recipe, then duck into my Christmas kitchen here and share it with you.  In preparation, I went to my Christmas breakfast Pinterest board so see if I had a pinned muffin recipe with basic ingredients.  I decided on these Cinnamon Roll Muffins from Jamie Cooks it Up.  Jamie's site has been another of those I've come to rely on for wonderful recipes.

Although there are a few steps -- making the cinnamon filling/topping, and the glaze, in addition to the actual muffin batter -- these came together quite quickly.  My muffin tins are fairly standard, but I got only 12 muffins out of the recipe rather than 15.

 

Muffins just out of the oven.  You can see how the topping bubbled over a bit.

I was somewhat disappointed with the maple-y glaze that sounded like such a yummy part of the recipe.  For one thing, there was too much of it.  Also, it was too thin.  I think that another time I would halve the glaze recipe but add more confectioners sugar.  Glazing the muffins while warm resulted not in a pretty drizzle like Jamie's photo, but just an overall glazing, even though I did drizzle it from a teaspoon.  In the photo below, some of the muffins were glazed within ten minutes, but others I glazed when completely cooled.  I did like the maple flavor, though.  Another time I would tinker a good bit with the glaze ingredient proportions.

These muffins are scrumptious and actually would work well as a part of Christmas breakfast, but I've decided they wouldn't be ideal as a kitchen gift.  The topping is too brittle and crumbly (not at all a bad thing, but messy for a gift), and the bottoms of the muffin liners (I used foil ones)got rather greasy. For serving these, I would remove the liners and either serve the muffins without them or place the muffins into fresh, decorative paper liners as I have done below.

Bottom line: a wonderful recipe, but not for a kitchen gift.  I may well make them for special breakfasts with friends throughout the year!