This fun and easy recipe holds on to all the flavor and fluffy texture of your favorite vanilla cake donuts, but takes way less fuss and work to make with a fun strawberry-licious twist!
Prep oven/pans and combine all wets and then all dries: preheat your oven to 375°F. Grease a 24-cup mini muffin pan (see notes). Measure all dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined. Stir together milk, eggs, and vanilla in a separate small bowl until well combined.
Mix wets and dries together: pour the wet ingredients and the melted butter into the dry ingredients and stir until batter is uniform and smooth, with no clumps of dry powder remaining.
Bake: bake muffins for 10-14 minutes until centers have puffed up and feel set when gently pressed (they will stay pretty pale on top even when fully baked).
Cool: allow muffins to cool 5 minutes, then remove them from the pan and let cool another 10 minutes while you prepare the topping.
TO COAT THE MUFFINS:
Melt butter: melt butter in a small, microwave-safe bowl.
Prep topping: crush freeze-dried strawberries in a zip-top bag until they're mostly a fine powder (a few little chunks are okay). In a separate small bowl from the butter, combine sugar and strawberry powder until thoroughly mixed.
Fill with jam: Using a piping bag fitted with a small round tip (with about ¼" opening), pipe some strawberry jam into each mini muffin from the bottom using the piping tip to make a hole and fill with a little jam. (see notes)
Dunk tops (or the whole muffin!): dunk warm muffin tops into melted butter, allowing any excess to drip off, and then roll the muffin tops in the berry sugar. Repeat process for all remaining muffins.
Share and enjoy: serve warm or keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. Share and enjoy some tasty, jam-packed fun!
Notes
A Jammy Mess: If you're having a hard time piping from the bottom you can try making a whole through the side instead and wiggling the piping tip around inside the muffin to make a little room before squeezing in the jam. That said, these guys are meant to be a little messy and that's part of the fun!
Make 'em big! To make delicious full-sized muffins, prepare the batter in the same manner, but adjust the bake time to 14-17 minutes divided evenly between 12 full-sized muffin cups.
Greased Pans: One of the classic features of a donut is that buttery caramelized crust. To achieve this, I recommend baking these muffins right in a greased muffin pan rather than a muffin pan lined with muffin papers. In a pinch, you absolutely can use muffin papers; you’ll just find that the resulting donut muffins are a bit more muffin-y and a bit less donut-y (but still delicious!).
It’d mean so much to me if you could please give the recipe card a ⭐ rating on the site and leave a comment to help others find this sweet recipe! Xo, Jocelyn @ Mint+Mallow