Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Muffins

Like your favorite sweet pull-apart loaf, these individual muffins have layers of buttery cinnamon sugar to peel off and nibble to your heart’s content.

Sunday mornings are a little less fast paced around here — the only morning of the week that I actually have time to indulge in a breakfast besides cereal. So I thought, why not try these Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Muffins for a Sunday morning treat?

One of life’s greatest pleasures is pulling warm bread apart. Mmm … these muffins have layers of warm buttery bread sprinkled with a cinnamon sugar mixture. Each muffin has intricate layers just begging to be devoured.

• Pillsbury Simply Rustic French Bread
• You could totally make your own bread dough to start. But why? I used a package of Pillsbury Simply Rustic French Bread dough to start out these muffins fast and easy.
• Make slits in bread dough.
• I made small markings in the dough so I would know where to cut and to make sure all of the pieces were uniform in size.
• Make discs of dough.
• Using a very sharp knife, cut each slit into a slice of dough.
• Roll out each disc.
• Roll out each disc of dough on wax paper. The more surface area we have the more butter and cinnamon sugar we can incorporate into these.
• Brush dough discs with melted butter.
• Brush each disc with browned butter. Browned butter has a nutty taste and adds so much more than just regular melted butter. Once you’ve had browned butter you’ll try to find a way to use it in everything.
• Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
• Sprinkle the dough generously with your cinnamon sugar mixture. The mixture seeps into all of the cracks and crevasses when baking, making some major magic happen.
• Stack the sugared dough discs and cut the stack in half.
• Stack about 5-6 discs together and cut them down the middle. We want to put the cut side down here so that the pretty edges are showing up top.
• Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Muffins ready to eat!
• After they’ve baked you have layers and layers of cinnamon sugar bread all in one little muffin. It’s really hard to eat just one!

Ingredients

• Pillsbury Simply Rustic French Bread dough
• 1/2 stick of butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. In a small skillet, brown butter over medium-low heat, about 5 minutes. You know the butter is browned when it turns a light caramel color and smells slightly nutty. ((Be careful not to burn the butter!)) Once browned, set the butter aside to cool.
3. Remove bread dough from tube and place on a cutting board. Starting in the middle, divide the dough with a small slit. The divide again and again until you have 31 slits. Using a very sharp knife, slice the dough. You should end up with 32 slices. Flatten each slice with you hands or a rolling pin and place on a sheet of parchment or wax paper.
4. In a bowl, combine the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
5. To assemble the muffins, brush each dough slice with the brown butter. Then sprinkle with the entire sugar mixture. (Yes, ALL of the cinnamon sugar!) Stack the dough slice on top of each other. (some stacks will have five slices and some will have six.) Using a sharp knife, slice the stacks down the middle.
6. Place two of the sliced stacks, side by side, cut side down into a greased muffin tin. Repeat with the rest of the stacks.
7. **This step is very important!!** Before you put the muffin tin in the oven place it on a larger, rimmed baking sheet. This will catch any butter/sugar overflow and avoid a very smokey oven.
8. Bake muffins for 20-25 minutes until tops are golden brown. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Gently remove. Enjoy!!

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