Can a Batch of Baked Muffins Be Mixed Again

The Biggest Mistakes You Make When Blistering Muffins

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Information technology's been said that carbs are the ultimate comfort food. And who doesn't need the food equivalent of a warm hug? Sure, staff of life has been soaking upwards the limelight lately, with newly minted bakers and quondam pros alike kneading dough, nurturing starters, trading recipes, and turning out enviable loaves in their ain kitchens. But what if you don't want to invest countless hours to come across delicious results? What if you demand more firsthand carb satisfaction, a tasty bite that can exist mixed and baked in a jiffy, rather than a multi-hour project?. Enter the muffin.

Every bit cute as a cupcake, lighter than a scone, muffins are unremarkably eaten for breakfast or an afternoon snack. They're also a cinch to make. They tin be as fancy as a streusel-topped muffin, or every bit basic as a corn muffin, a cousin of cornbread.

If by at present y'all're hurrying into your kitchen, posthaste, scrounging effectually for that ready of measuring cups and setting up your mise en place, hold on to your apron for a second. As with every blistering attempt, having a few tricks of the merchandise in your culinary arsenal tin can make the divergence between mediocre results and full-on success. If you ask u.s.a., here are some of the biggest mistakes you make when baking muffins.

Using expired baking ingredients for your muffins

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There are no shortcuts when it comes to the ingredients you use when baking muffins, and that includes using ingredients that take been hanging out at the dorsum of your pantry for far too long. Using fresh, quality baking ingredients assist ensure that your muffins — and every baking project you undertake — wind up tasting heavenly. Every bit the Food Network reminds the states, baking is all almost chemistry, so if y'all desire your culinary creations to come out moist yet dense (or chewy, light, or flaky, depending on what you're baking) you're going to have to suspension out the good stuff.

Basics like blistering pulverization and blistering soda, besides every bit yeast, are leavening agents, and help create a light texture or crumb. That means if you desire your muffins to rise and have the perfect texture, y'all can't use expired leaveners that may have lost their magic.

And the same goes for every other ingredient your favorite muffin recipe calls for. If yous've been hanging on to that bag of flour since your terminal holiday party 2 years ago, or your butter or oil expired last calendar month, at present is the time to supercede them. Many flours tin can exist stored unopened for six months to a year, in the pantry or fridge, while granulated saccharide can final for years. Still, it'due south best to check the expiration dates before y'all get started.

Skipping the room temperature stride when making muffins

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And while we're on the topic of blistering fundamentals, here's a friendly reminder that it'south too a huge no-no to use refrigerator-common cold butter, eggs, liquids, and other ingredients in your cosmos — unless, of course, the recipe you're working from calls specifically for cold ingredients. Earlier y'all start mixing your batter together, make sure that your blistering ingredients come to room temperature, which is about 70 degrees.

According to Epicurious, it all comes down to science. Creating the right structure in your batch of muffins (or whatever blistering undertaking, for that matter) is directly related to how warm or cold your ingredients are. Butter that's a little warm and soft, for instance, is able to ameliorate mix with the sugar and create a more creamy batter. And then taking your ingredients out of the refrigerator a few hours earlier prep fourth dimension is just as important as precisely measuring (or weighing) your ingredients. Similarly, cold eggs or milk hit a warm concoction tin cause the mixture to curdle — not a reaction you lot're looking for when you lot're trying to create a sweet treat.

Measuring muffin ingredients instead of weighing ingredients

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While muffin making doesn't crave expensive kitchen tools — a ready of mixing bowls, a wooden spoon, a spatula, measuring spoons, a nonstick muffin tin, and perhaps a whisk, are all y'all probably need — you might want to shell out another $forty or $fifty for a digital kitchen scale. Information technology may seem like a frivolous purchase, but it's a tool that, when used properly, tin can ameliorate all of your blistering projects.

Some culinary pros believe that weighing your ingredients on a kitchen scale, every bit opposed to measuring your ingredients (which is probably how many of us were taught) is an essential trick of the trade. "Weighing ingredients is finally getting some respect in the States," Anne Margaret O'Hare, chef/owner of the NYC-based catering visitor, O Cuisine Catering, told Mashed. Kitchen scales, she explains, have long been a standard tool for chefs in Europe. "Weighing ingredients, not measuring or scooping, is more than accurate, considering the fashion one person or another might measure, can fluctuate. Yous tin even put liquids on the scale."

Not preheating the oven when you brand muffins

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While skipping the preheat-the-oven step might seem like a smart time-saver, believe us, information technology'south non worth those extra 15 or 20 minutes. A preheated oven is necessary if you desire consistent, perfectly cooked muffins. And that'due south definitely what we want. Think those leavening agents, our cooking pals baking soda and baking pulverisation? It's particularly essential to preheat an oven whenever you lot use ane or both, because they react to the rapid alter in temperature — and then existence in the oven while it slowly heats merely won't get the same result.

But preheating shouldn't end after xv minutes. "When you preheat the oven to say 350 degrees, allow it rut for 10 minutes more than before putting your muffins in, because at that place are still cool spots in the oven," says Robert Seixas, Managing director of Culinary Educational activity for Allie'due south Place Center for Culinary Instruction & Employment, Homes for the Homeless, in New York City.

Another tip from the pros? "You should use an oven thermometer because ofttimes with home ovens, the temperature is off," says Seixas.

And refrain from opening the oven door to peek inside (no how matter how much y'all want to!), because you let the heat escape.

Over-mixing your muffin batter

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"Communication on muffins? It's like pancakes, don't over-mix it," says Ann Kirk, pastry chef at the restaurants Piffling Dom'due south and The 101 Coffee Shop, both in Los Angeles.

In an effort to make sure that all of the ingredients alloy together, some novice bakers tin get carried abroad and mix their batter for way too long, until gluten develops in the flour, and the batter becomes shine. The cease issue could be a tough (non tender) muffin with air pockets called tunnels. And nobody wants to eat that.

The ideal way to mix is to implement what's known equally the muffin method, which is perfect for making quick breads like banana bread, or, of course, muffins. Basically, dry ingredients should exist combined in i bowl, wet ingredients in another, then the wet is added to the dry, and barely stirred together until the flour streaks disappear. Information technology'south okay if your concoction is lumpy — in fact, yous desire information technology to be slightly lumpy.

Chef Anne Margaret O'Hare sometimes sifts her flour earlier she gets started. "Sifting is a nice step. It lightens the flour upwardly, and information technology spreads more than hands. You can incorporate it more gently."

Using newspaper or aluminum liners for your muffins

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With their pretty colors and unique patterns, paper muffin or cupcake liners can add a bear on of whimsy to your fresh-baked batch. Paper and aluminum liners might also brand your muffins wait more professional, and every bit The Bandbox Eats notes, they may brand touching the finished goods more aseptic, especially when yous're bringing dozens of muffins to take to a large gathering or broil sale.

That said, some bakers aren't partial to paper or aluminum liners, or the other alternative, parchment paper, and they have their reasons. "Never employ them," cautions Seixas of Allie's Place Center for Culinary Instruction & Employment. "They inhibit the browning on the sides of the muffins. And they often go stuck, so they're difficult to pull out of the tin."

If you're opting out of liners or parchment newspaper, brand certain to grease your muffin tin, even if you use a non-stick version (which is preferable over aluminum tins if sticking is a concern). The greasing options run the gamut from melted butter or shortening, applied with a pastry brush, to cooking spray, oil, and professional blistering grease, which tin be found in block supply stores. Some bakers also like to add together a low-cal dusting of flour to the muffin tin wells, which, according to Fine Cooking, creates a sealed, smooth chaff on broiled appurtenances.

Under-filling muffin tins

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Muffins can be fabricated in all shapes and sizes, from mini muffins (something of a sensation in the 1930s, co-ordinate to editor Darra Goldstein'southward reference tome, The Oxford Companion to Carbohydrate and Sweets) to veritable door stoppers. But if you lot're peckish a baker-style muffin with an impressive muffin top — that crispy, irresistible crowning glory — it doesn't happen on its own. The secret to creating muffin tops: Don't skimp on the batter. Instead of filling the muffin tin wells about three-quarters full, which yields a smaller muffin, fill each well to the top. In his recipe for Over the Summit blueberry muffins, Alton Brownish, host of the Food Network testify Skillful Eats and cookbook author, uses a cup of batter in each of the muffin tin can wells, to obtain that much sought-later on muffin pinnacle.

And if it's a solo muffin summit you lot're afterward, sans bottom, bake your batter in a muffin top pan, and indulge in what many consider the best part of any muffin! (For some sweet tooths, muffin tops are the only reason to even swallow a muffin!)

Later filling the tins, resist the temptation to flatten it with a spoon, because all that will do is crush the air in the batter.

Not turning your muffin pan around halfway through blistering

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If you desire your muffins to be golden brown all over, without burnt edges, open the oven halfway through the suggested baking fourth dimension, and rotate that muffin can. Some neophyte bakers might not exist aware that ovens can have cold and hot areas. Over time, as you lot get more accustomed to the quirks of your own kitchen oven, you'll begin to notice which direction information technology tends toward. According to Melt's Illustrated, even calibrated ovens (ovens that have been adjusted for accurateness) can have hot and common cold spots, with temperatures plummeting within as much as a fifty-degree range.

If y'all're blistering i or two trays of muffins, make certain they're in the center of the oven. If y'all're on a baking roll and filling your oven to capacity, stagger your pans and switch pans from one rack to the other, midway through baking. And if you're multitasking or easily distracted, apply a timer to remind yourself to rotate that pan. That way you won't terminate upward with a batch that's half burned, and half under-cooked.

Not relying on the toothpick trick

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Your muffin recipe may call for a baking time of, say, 30 minutes, in a 375 caste oven, but that may not be the last word. Since by now y'all know that some ovens can run hot or cold, you may need to tack on an extra few baking minutes in the oven — or pull out the muffin tray a few minutes before phone call fourth dimension, to prevent excess browning. This is the moment where you take a make clean toothpick and insert information technology into the eye of a muffin. If yous desire a moist muffin, look for a few crumbs on the toothpick. If it comes out clean, the crumb is probably completely set up, with no actress wet. It all depends on how you similar your muffins.

If you've been vigilant with your toothpick, your baked creations won't fall into that dreaded territory of overcooked muffins.

In How to Bake Everything, cookbook author Mark Bittman suggests that recipe instructions should be followed and measurements should be exact, simply notes that a moment may arise when you need to employ your best judgement and broil with your senses. In other words, using your intuition, confidence, and feel to decide when your muffins are done. Using your senses, Bittman says, volition make you a better baker.

Leaving muffins in the pan to absurd

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It might seem like a good thought to let your muffins sit in the pan after taking them out of the oven. After all, what damage could information technology practise? Plus, you lot have a sink full of bowls and spatulas to wash. Except, that's a very bad thought.

Broiled goods continue to cook in the residual heat, even after you take them out of the oven. That'south definitely not what yous want them to do in one case you've determined they're done baking.

If you leave them to cool in the muffin tray for more than a few minutes, y'all may too wind upwards with a soggy batch. According to Foodal, sogginess can result when the wet is absorbed back into the nibble. When the hot muffins stay in the pan, the released steam hits the tin can walls and condenses — what other choice does it have, since at that place's no other fashion to release information technology? Non exactly the advantage you were looking for after all of your effort.

To avoid both of those issues, have those muffins out of the baking tray after a few minutes and place them on a rack to absurd. Done and washed.

Eating your muffins only 1 style

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Muffins are commonly wolfed down, um, eaten, cold or hot from the oven for breakfast or an afternoon snack. Some kinds of muffins, like corn muffins and blueberry muffins, also sense of taste delicious when toasted and slathered with butter and jelly, or even cream cheese.

But you can also get very, very creative. It turns out that at that place are more than a few ways to swallow your morn muffin. According to Taste of Dwelling, muffins tin can be spread with flossy butter and sautéed in a griddle, eaten open up-face style with peanut butter, turned into a kind of crumb sandwich (with the muffin cut in one-half and the crumbs facing in), or drizzled with a sugary coat, while stale muffins can get a second life when dipped in eggs and turned into French toast or used as a major ingredient in a tempting bread pudding.

Who knew? Bet y'all never imagined that when y'all baked your last batch of muffins!

Restricting your imagination — muffins come in infinite varieties

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Whether savory, sweet, or somewhere in betwixt, muffins come up in space varieties, from corn muffins and blueberry muffins to chocolate chip muffins, banana muffins, and streusel-topped muffins. And your recipe, whether it was passed down through your family for generations or taken from a blog, just may exist the starting point for total innovation.

Let's say your recipe calls for vanilla extract, but you only have almond excerpt, or the ingredients list cinnamon, but your chiffonier boasts ... nutmeg. Peradventure dear is the sweetener suggested, only you only take agave nectar on hand. In some cases you tin can consult substitution charts to run across what the correct replacement might be for what you lot lack. But if you have a flake of baking experience under your chugalug, y'all may want to utilise this as an opportunity to leap into uncharted territory. Y'all might wind upwards loving that almond flavor more than you expected.

"Muffins are one of those pastries that y'all tin easily get creative with," says Ann Kirk of Footling Dom'south. "Try subbing different fruits into your blueberry muffin recipe. It's too a nice touch to add together texture by putting Demerara sugar on tiptop. Sprinkle information technology on just before baking."

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Source: https://www.mashed.com/214323/the-biggest-mistakes-you-make-when-baking-muffins/

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