Better Muffins

I once wrote about muffins and posted the recipe I use. Effective today, I have converted to a new muffin recipe. Actually it is a cupcake recipe.

As I had written previously, I love muffins and these were among the things I really, really wanted to bake. I used to buy French Baker muffins regularly. (They had the best muffin tops!) However whenever I followed muffin recipes found in cookbooks, I could never get the crunch on the muffin tops and the moist texture that French Baker muffins offered.

My muffins always turned out how muffins are expected to be.

Strictly speaking, muffins are not expected to be sweet since they fall under the bread family rather than the cake family. They tend to be dry and the tops are expected to be cracked. In this respect, all my previous muffins passed those specs.

However, all the commercial bakery and cafe muffins (which I love to eat) are moist and sweet and have smooth crunchy tops ... and best of all, they are yummy! I wanted to churn out muffins like those but was never able to do so.

Never ... until this afternoon, that is.

The thing about this recipe is that it has been under my nose all along. It is found in my well-used (bordering on over-used) Maya Kitchen Mix and Match cookbook. I modified it slightly based on how I normally make muffins though. If you want to see the original recipe, it is on page 60 of the first of the Mix and Match cookbook series.

BANANA MUFFINS

(makes 12 muffins)

2 c all purpose flour

1 c sugar

1 t baking soda

1 t baking powder

1 t salt

2/3 c milk combined with

1 t vinegar

1/4 c oil

2 eggs

1 c bananas, mashed

Preheat oven to 350F.

Grease a muffin pan or line with paper cups.

Set aside.

Sift dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.

Combine milk and vinegar in a measuring cup.

Add oil, then eggs. Beat together.

Stir in bananas.

Pour the wet ingredients (from the measuring cup)

into the dry ingredients (in the bowl).

Mix until just moist. Do not overmix.

Divide batter into 12 muffin holes.

Bake 18 to 20 minutes until golden brown.

Since this recipe had an extra egg and about 3/4 cup more sugar than my usual muffin batches, they turned our soft and moist, instead of hard and dry. (The original recipe actually called for 1 1/3 c of sugar but I figured my hips could do without that extra 1/3 c of sugar.)

One other thing I love about this recipe is that it enabled me to discover the secret to great muffin tops.

All muffin recipes I have seen require one to fill the muffin pan up to 2/3 full. And all the recipes I've tried yielded exactly enough batter to do just that. I have always known that I would need to have a whole lot of batter to get my muffin tops to crown over my muffins and come up with mushroom-shaped muffins seen in cafes. But this is the first time I have managed to get enough batter to test it. This particular recipe had a little over two cups of wet ingredients such that when I mixed all the ingredients and started filling in the muffin pan, I found myself with a lot more batter to go around.

By the time I distributed all the batter, the muffin cups were full to the brim.

The result? Mushroom shaped muffins with crunchy muffin tops.

Ü Ü Ü

The secret is in the batter!!

Yes, I definitely love this recipe. I am assuming I will be able to repeat this recipe and modify it to have a variety of flavors. It seems that what is commercially known as muffins are simply cupcakes with crusty tops after all.