Sunday Brunch - Baked Apple Donuts

Another weekend, another fun brunch!

I was in the mood for something fun for breakfast this morning, but couldn't quite decide what. I started looking around at different recipes, but found reasons to count out everything... didn't want a yeast recipe, because I didn't want it to take that long. Didn't want french toast because we only had three eggs in the house... and so on and so on. Then I saw a recipe for apple fritters, and that looked really good. Only I didn't want something fried. So I googled "baked apple fritters," just to see what I would find. One of the first hits, though, was someone pointing out that if you don't fry it, you can't call it a fritter. Doesn't mean you can't do it, doesn't mean it isn't delicious, but it really isn't a fritter. So when I changed my search term to "baked apple donuts," I had many more recipes from which to choose.

And that is when I came across this recipe. Looked easy, looked straightforward, and, most importantly, looked delicious. While they are called donuts, they are really more like muffins, but they definitely maintained the apple-fritter spirit, so it looked perfect.

Little miss happily picked out the three best apples out of our bag, then helped me get down to business mearuring and mixing.

The most time consuming part of the whole process was one that is barely noted in the recipe - peeling, coring and dicing the apples. See, the recipe just lists "two cups cored and finely diced apples" as a line item, so doesn't take into consideration the time it takes to achieve that in its estimation of prep time... oops. To entertain little miss during this process, I tried to peel each apple in a single strand, something I am not that great at... The good thing, though, is that she liked playing with the long curl, which gave me the time to dice up two cups of apples, so it was worth the effort.

Apples done, though, the rest of the recipe was very simple, and came together very quickly. I did make one change to the recipe, though. As it is written, once these come out of the oven, they are dipped into melted butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar. Yum, right? But remember how I didn't want fritters because they're fried? Some how, dousing these muffins in a whole stick of melted butter defeated the purpose, in my mind at least, of not frying them. But, well, yum, right? So instead, I melted a few tablespoons of butter and brushed the tops of each with the butter, then sprinkled them with the cinnamon sugar. Same idea, slightly less guilt.

These were delicious. Do they count as a fruit serving for the day, too? Because these made an excellent breakfast (brunch) and will definitely be made again. And be breakfast tomorrow morning, too.

Baked Apple Donuts

(only minorly adapted from Tasty Kitchen)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 cup butter

2 large eggs, beaten

1 cup milk

2 cups cored and finely diced apples

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray.

With a fork, mix together flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Add 1/2 cup butter and mix until it is broken up. Set aside.

In another bowl, combine eggs, milk and diced apples. Add this to the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.

Spoon the batter into greased muffin pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until muffins are light to medium brown.

While donuts are baking, melt the two tablespoons of butter and set aside. Combine remaining sugar and cinnamon.

When the donut muffins come out of the oven, brush the tops with the melted butter, then sprinkle them with the cinnamon sugar.

Enjoy!