Snickerdoodle Breakfast Puffs

If we have a little extra time on Saturday mornings, one of the favorite things my girls and I like to do is watch the Pioneer Woman.  They love watching all about her horses, farm animals, kids, and the recipes she whips up on the ranch.  We were actually watching an older episode where Ree was making something called "French Breakfast Puffs", and I could tell just by the look in my oldest daughter's eyes she was dying to test out that recipe.  Like, right that very second.  So into the kitchen we went to surprise daddy with a home-baked tasty treat!

Snickerdoodle Breakfast Puffs - or French Breakfast Puffs from the Pioneer Woman

I happen to have all of Ree's cookbooks, and we found the French Puffs recipe in the first one.  Did I mention that all my books are now personally signed by the Pioneer Woman herself?  That's right!  Last December I was able to meet Ree in person when she came to our town.  I shall blog about that soon, but you must know, she is as sweet and kind in person as she comes across in her show!  All of that, and she makes some pretty delicious food!  We got so excited about making this recipe I even forgot to take pictures until the dough was already in the muffin tin.  No need to fret though, Ree has the play by play picture recipe posted on her blog in case you want to make these bad boys yourself.  Once you get the dough ready, you scoop in generously into a 12-muffin tin.

This dough is nice and thick - easy to use an ice cream scoop to get it into the pan

Bake at 350º for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  These baked up huge! Enormous actually.  Come to think of it, the next time we make this recipe, I am totally going to make these in a few mini muffin pans.  That way you can pop them in your mouth like a little sugary donut hole.

Next, while they are cooling a bit on the stove top, mix in a bowl 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 3 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Mix sugar and cinnamon until blended, and at the same time, melt two sticks of butter in another glass bowl in the microwave.

Making an assembly line, roll the muffin completely in the melted butter and quickly roll around in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.  This was a bit messy and I must appologize there was no real way to snap a pic with my camera of the dipping process, mostly because my hand was coated in cinnamon and sugar the second I started.

Mmmm delicious Snickerdoodle puffs

Most of my muffins were so big that I ended up cutting them in half to make smaller portions.  The butter made a nice way for the sugar and cinnamon to stick and coat the whole thing.  Seriously.  These were so good!  We could not get over how much they tasted like a snickerdoodle cookie.

 
We stored these is a plastic container with a lid and they lasted for a few mornings of breakfasts, and come to think of it, bed time snacks to boot!  Ree also said you can freeze these up and defrost them as needed.  We can not wait to make these again in mini muffin size. Here's a link to her recipe one more time.   Enjoy