As a temporary parting gift to my new friends at NextSpace (the awesomest co-working space this side of teh interwebz) I leave you with the recipe for the hopefully soon to be infamous muffnuts.

What is a muffnut you ask? Other than being a wonderful branding opportunity that should be franchised out worldwide, it’s simple:

Muffin tin + Donut batter = Muffnut

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teenytinyturkey/398949715/

Mini Baked Donuts
Make 20 Donuts

Dry Ingredients:
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp (scant) Nutmeg
1 tiny pinch or shake Cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:
1/2 Cup Soymilk
1/2 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar (white vinegar is fine if you don’t have Apple Cider)
1/2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
Egg Replacer for 1 Egg (1 Tbsp ground flax seed blended with 3 Tbsp water)
4 Tbs Earth Balance (vegan margarine, or replace with canola oil)

Preheat oven to 350º F

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients with a whisk to mix thoroughly. Combine wet ingredients in a small sauce pan over medium low heat and mix until earth balance is melted. This mixture should NOT get too hot, you should be able to stick your finger in the mixture. It should feel slightly warm. If you burn yourself, 1) it’s not my fault! and 2) it’s too hot for the dough!

Add wet to dry and mix until just combined. It should form a very soft dough.

Using a tablespoon measure, scoop out dough into your ungreased nonstick muffin pan. Smooth out the top of the dough with your fingers, this will make for more even, prettier Muffnuts, but isn’t crucial.

The dough sits just below the rim. If you over fill, your Muffnuts will come out looking like it has a little muffin top. You want the muffing tin, but not the muffin top. Really, there should only be half an inch of dough in the muffin tin.

Bake for 12 minutes. They should not be browned on top, but a tester will come out clean. Invert hot pan over a cutting board or cooling rack to release Muffnuts. Allow to cool completely before holing and decorating. Once cool, take a large straw (the kind you use for bubble tea) and poke a hole in your muff to make it more like a nut…

Time for toppings!

Glaze with Sprinkles
1/2 Cup Powdered Sugar (lump free!)
1 Tbs Soymilk
Bowl full of sprinkles (1/4 to 1/2 cup, ish?)

Whisk soymilk and powdered sugar together. Dip the “bottom” half of the Muffnut (the side with the nicer shape) into the glaze, let some drip off, then dip glaze-side down into sprinkles. Transfer to a wire rack that has been set on top of some parchment paper. The excess glaze will drip through the rack onto the paper for easy cleaning later.

Chocolate Dip

This is the easy part. Melt 6 oz of high quality fairly sweet chocolate over low heat in a double boiler. Remove from heat and stir until chocolate is smooth and barely warm to the touch. I should mention that you should be very careful not to get any water in the chocolate or it could seize, and no one likes that!

Dip your donuts one-by-one into the chocolate until completely covered. Place donut on your wire rack to drip off excess chocolate – it’ll make for a much smoother appearance than if you try to scrape off excess chocoalte with your fingers. Allow to set until chocolate isn’t so shiny and can be picked up without making a sticky mess!

*Note from the original chef: So, I waited until the chocolate was set and realized that my donuts had glued themselves to the rack, making the bottoms rip off when your try to pick one up. I think it’d be better to let these set on parchment paper! Also, use a decently sweet chocolate, mine was too bitter.

And there you have it – a Muffnut or-gee in your mouth. And remember – the more sticky things get, the more fun it must have been.