Some of the easiest pastries come in mini form and are rooted in pancake mix! I always keep a giant Costco-sized bag of our favorite pancake mix on hand for last-minute baking decisions. Need donuts? Here you go. What about biscuits? You got it. Uh oh, we forgot dinner rolls! No worries. I've even heard of Depression Era recipes taking pancake mix and using them for birthday cakes and cookies. As long as you have a bag of specifically buttermilk pancake mix, you can be unstoppable in the kitchen!

A few weekends ago, we went on our first camping trip with some friends of ours and knew that having a batch of my easy pancake mix donut muffins would not only be great for breakfast, but would be an easy and fun treat around the campfire at night. This recipe only takes a few minutes to whip up and requires very basic level ingredients and skills to bake them! Perfect for beginners or those on a time crunch like we were.

VERY IMPORTANT TIPS: The most important thing to remember for this recipe is that you need to mix your wet and dry separately before combing because over mixing the batter will make for denser donut muffins. Additionally, you have to bake this in a mini muffin tin or 2 WITHOUT liners because you want the moisture that forms on the outside after you pop them out to help the sugar mixture adhere to every nook and cranny. Don't wait too long to pour these into the tins and putting them in the oven. I let ours sit out for a few minutes because I forgot to preheat the oven. By the time the oven was ready, the pancake mix ingredients had caused a bit of a fluff and thicken action to the batter and i had to stir it back into a proper consistency. I didn't think it ruined it, but it did make it more difficult to portion out before baking.

You should be able to get 12-18 donut muffins out of this recipe, depending on how much you fill the trays. I filled mine almost to the top, with maybe a 1/4" of space, and we found that to work perfectly for us.

Easy Pancake Mix Donut Muffins

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Prep Time 10

Cook Time 18

Course Breakfast, Dessert, Pastries

Servings 18 donut muffins

Equipment

2 Mixing bowls
1-2 mini muffin trays

Ingredients

Donut Muffin Mix

2 cups Krusteaz Buttermilk Pancake Mix
¾ cup milk
½ cup granulated sugar
3 tbsp butter melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Cinnamon Sugar Topping

3 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp brown sugar
2-3 tsp ground cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat the oven to350. (This is a very important step. Read above for more important tips.)
Mix your wet ingredients separately from your dry ingredients. Once thoroughly combined separately, mix thoroughly together in one bowl.
Spray a mini muffin tin with baking spray or coat in a bit of butter to help with removal. Add batter to cups (without liners) until almost filled.
Bake for 12 minutes. Poke with a fork, knife or toothpick to test if cooked all the way through. Check every 2-3 minutes until done, or outside is golden brown.
While donut muffins are baking, mix together sugar, brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.
Once removed from oven, carefully pull all the donut muffins from the tin and place into a large bowl. Sprinkle sugar mixture over all the donut muffins and toss to coat thoroughly.
Let cool and serve!