Cinnamon Doughnut Muffins

The week after Easter is always a little flat, mi amor. The pernil is gone. The pasteles from the freezer are gone. The house smells like its normal self again — coffee, old wood, the faint lemon of the floor cleaner — and not like Easter, which smells like garlic and roasting pork and spring. I miss it already.

This week I made tembleque. Coconut milk pudding, thickened with cornstarch, dusted with cinnamon, set in little glass dishes in the refrigerator overnight. The Puerto Rican answer to panna cotta, though we had it first and we do not acknowledge the Italian claim. Tembleque means "trembling" — the pudding should quiver when you set it on the table, a pale white quiver, the shape holding but just barely. If your tembleque stands too proud, you have added too much cornstarch. If it slumps, not enough. It is a diva.

Mami ate a whole portion on Wednesday — a small miracle, because she has been eating less, and she ate the tembleque the way a child eats a tembleque, with the spoon scraping the dish, every last bit, and when she was done she said, "This is the one food you do not ruin." High praise. I wrote it down.

Thursday Eduardo had a check-up. Blood pressure good. Cholesterol a little high. The doctor said, "You should walk more." Eduardo walks two miles a day, every day. I said to the doctor, "He walks more than you do, probably." The doctor laughed. Eduardo did not laugh. Eduardo does not enjoy being compared to his doctor. But he walked a third mile on Friday, just to make the point. Wepa.

Friday night I sat at the kitchen table with my recipe notebook. I am not yet writing the recipes down — that comes later, in the decade after Mami dies, when I realize the hands forget — but I am starting to think about it. What would I write? Tembleque — one can of coconut milk, three tablespoons cornstarch, half cup sugar, cinnamon on top. That is the recipe. That is also not the recipe. The recipe is also: your mother telling you the coconut milk should be cold when you whisk it. The recipe is also: the specific brand of canela Abuela Consuelo used, which is no longer made. The recipe is also: the bowl. The specific bowl. My mother's. Which is at her apartment. Which I will inherit. Which I do not want to inherit because inheriting it means she is gone.

The recipe is not only what goes in the pot. The recipe is also the grief and the love and the geography, and no cookbook can hold that, and that is why I have not started writing. But I am thinking. Spring makes me think. Wepa.

When I closed my recipe notebook Friday night, I still had cinnamon on my fingers from the tembleque — that specific smell of canela that I now associate entirely with Mami scraping the last spoonful from her dish. I did not want the feeling to end with the pudding. So Saturday morning I reached for that same jar of cinnamon and made these Cinnamon Doughnut Muffins: simple, warm, coated in butter and sugar and spice, the kind of thing you can set on the table and watch disappear without a word of explanation needed. Abuela Consuelo’s brand is gone, but the canela is still here, still doing its work.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
3/4 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Cinnamon Sugar Coating:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (canela)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin or line with paper cups.
Mix dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and sugar until evenly combined.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk together the vegetable oil, egg, milk, and vanilla extract.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined. Do not overmix — a few small lumps are fine. The batter will be thick.
Fill and bake. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until the tops are set and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Make the cinnamon sugar. While the muffins bake, stir together the 1/2 cup sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon in a shallow bowl. Melt the butter in a separate small bowl.
Coat the muffins. Let muffins cool for just 3 to 4 minutes — enough to handle, but still warm. Working one at a time, brush each muffin all over with melted butter, then roll it in the cinnamon sugar to coat. Set on a wire rack. Repeat with remaining muffins.
Serve. Serve warm. These are best the day they are made, though they keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to two days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cinnamon Doughnut Muffins — The Canela That Carries Everything