Mini Brown Butter Donut Muffins

• Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit if you are using a regular oven or 375 if you are using convection. Grease your mini muffin tins and set aside.
• First you want to brown your butter. In a heavy bottomed saucepan melt your butter over medium heat. Once melted, turn the heat up to medium high and allow your butter to sizzle and get happy until it is golden brown; be sure to swirl the butter around in the pot every so often to ensure bits on the bottom don't burn.
• Once your butter has a nice nutty aroma and is a beautiful golden brown, remove the pan from the heat and transfer the brown butter to a heatproof bowl to cool slightly.
• In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients; set aside.
• In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, eggs, vanilla until well combined. Slowly whisk in the browned butter. Once combined, pour the wet ingredients into the well of the dry ingredients.
• Use a spatula to gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined, being careful not to over-mix your batter – it is perfectly fine if you still have some streaks of dry ingredients here and there, as this will just end up giving you a more tender muffin.
• ** Note: If you over-mix, you run the risk of your muffins being tough – and let's be real, tough muffins are the enemy.
• Once your batter is mixed, fill your prepared mini muffin tins with about 1 tbsp of the batter each. They should basically fill the molds to the top but not be overflowing.
• Bake your mini muffins for about 12-14 minutes or until the tops are a nice golden brown and they spring back to the touch.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool for five minutes in the pan. Don't let them cool off completely, because you want them to be a little warm still when you roll them in that cinnamon sugar.

Turning the muffins into donuts…

• Whisk together the cinnamon and sugar in a large mixing bowl; set aside. Once your donuts have cooled for a few minutes in the pan, turn them out onto a wired rack.
• Now it’s time to get real, and get your hands dirty. Dip one mini donut muffin at a time into the melted butter, just a touch and use a pastry brush or your fingers to lightly coat the muffin in the brown butter. You don’t need to go crazy here and start soaking the muffins, just moisten them a little bit on all sides.
• Once coated in the butter, toss the muffin into the cinnamon sugar mixture. You can probably toss about 4-5 mini donut muffins into the cinnamon sugar mixture at once, and then gently toss them in the cinnamon sugar to coat them with a generous layer of allllll that sugary goodness. Gently remove them from the bowl and return them to the wired rack. Repeat this process until all of your mini donut muffins have been coated.
• Serve immediately.