Preheat oven to 375°
Coat mini muffin pans with non-stick spray.
In a small pan, melt one stick of unsalted butter and set aside to cool a bit. Whisk the milk, eggs, and vanilla in a small measuring cup and set aside. Measure all the dry muffin ingredients together in a medium bowl. Add the wet ingredients and the butter to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined and no more dry flour clumps are visible.
Fill the muffin cups ⅔ full, which for my 2 tablespoon muffins cups is about 1 ½ tablespoon per cup. You can also just put all the muffin batter in a ziplock bag, snip a small hole in the corner, and squeeze the batter into each cup, filling ⅔ full.
Bake for 12-14 minutes or until the muffins are all poofy and spring back when pressed. Allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn them out onto a wire cooling rack. Allow them to cool for 10-15 minutes. You can mix your topping while you wait!
(If you have more batter, like I did, allow the muffin tin to cool off, then refill and bake the next batch. You can get the first batch all sugary while they bake!)
Sugaring up the Muffins
Melt 1 ½ sticks of unsalted butter in a small pan. Set aside to cool a bit.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt.
Dip each muffin, top and bottom, in the melted butter and shake off any excess. Roll the buttery muffins in the spiced sugar mixture to coat evenly. Don’t eat it (maybe just one). Repeat with all the muffins. All done, but still have spiced sugar left? Give all the muffins another toss!Share with family or friends or, just this once, hoard them all to yourself. No one will know 😉
Notes
For a lighter spin, you can skip the butter dip and just sprinkle the spiced sugar on top of the mini muffins before baking.