{"id":17593,"date":"2020-06-13T19:39:36","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T23:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/?p=17593"},"modified":"2023-04-12T10:33:39","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T14:33:39","slug":"how-to-bake-the-best-fruit-muffins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bakeschool.com\/how-to-bake-the-best-fruit-muffins\/","title":{"rendered":"How to bake the best fruit muffins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fruit muffins are moist, tender, and buttery with lots of fresh fruit (or frozen) inside to balance out the sweetness of the muffin and they often come with streusel on top. Here's everything you need to know so that you can make the best fruit muffins. They're easy to bake once you master the recipe and techniques involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After baking hundreds of muffins, I wanted to share the ins and outs of making the best fruit muffins.<\/p>\n\n\n[feast_advanced_jump_to]\n\n\n

The ingredients to make muffins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It's hard to distinguish between a muffin and a cake, especially if you look at the baking ingredients<\/a> that both categories of recipes call for. They are almost indistinguishable when you break down the components. Here are the basic ingredients you may use to bake muffins and some common baking substitutions<\/a> you might come across. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dry ingredients<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The basic muffin is made with the same dry ingredients: flour, chemical leavening agents, salt, as well as spices to add flavour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flour<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The flour is usually all-purpose flour<\/strong>, but some may use part all-purpose and part whole wheat<\/strong> to make muffins a little more \"healthy.\" <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also incorporate whole grain cereals<\/strong> in muffin batters, like All Bran cereal to up the fibre content of muffins, again under the guise of making them healthier. I'm not here to debate whether muffins can be considered healthy or not, though I do love date bran muffins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding wheat bran<\/strong> to muffins is another great way to up the fibre content in your baked goods, like in these blueberry bran muffins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wet ingredients<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Eggs and milk<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Muffins are always made with eggs or egg substitutes<\/strong>, which could be a fruit pur\u00e9e like mashed banana as we saw in this eggless banana bread<\/a> recipe. Another alternative to eggs would be chia eggs or flax eggs, made from ground chia or flax seeds mixed with some water and left to gel until it has a texture just like egg whites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Muffins are also made with dairy milk or non-dairy milk, buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, or even cr\u00e8me fra\u00eeche<\/strong>. Personally, I prefer to bake with acidic dairy ingredients, especially sour cream. I find these lead to a more moist, tender muffin because acids reduce gluten formation that may occur when you mix the batter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fat<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The fat in muffin recipes is there to tenderize them<\/strong>, to create a better, softer mouthfeel. A lot of muffins are made with liquid fats, like vegetable oil, canola oil, mild olive oil, etc. Most of these don't impart much flavour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liquid oils are especially good at giving you the impression that baked goods made with oil are moister. That happens for two reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. oil is 100 % fat<\/strong>, which means if you replace butter with the same volume of oil, you are adding more fat<\/li>
  2. fats inhibit gluten<\/strong> development and so, the less gluten, the more tender the baked good (this point applies to both oil and butter)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The beauty of baking with most oils is that they can be whisked easily with other wet ingredients (egg and milk or acidic dairy). I think this is the number 1 reason that muffins are often made with liquid fats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On the other hand, if you bake your muffins with melted butter as your fat of choice, you'll notice melted butter will seize or harden when you incorporate it with the other liquids: usually, this is because of the temperature difference between the cold liquid ingredients and the melted butter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Butter adds so much flavour to baked goods<\/strong>, and for this reason, I choose to make my muffins with butter. But the drawback is butter is solid and fairly firm at room temperature, which can lead to muffins seeming dry when they are made with butter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Honey<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Sugar<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Sugar is technically considered a wet ingredient because it's hygroscopic, meaning sugar<\/strong> makes baked goods moister by trapping water.<\/strong> However, when you are making muffins, certain mixing techniques have you incorporate the sugar with the dry ingredients, so it's hard to categorize it for this reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The sugar used in muffin recipes can be granulated sugar, cane sugar, or brown sugar. These may get mixed with the dry ingredients and thus would be categorized as a dry ingredient. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You may use a combination of granulated sugar and liquid sugar, like honey or maple syrup. In this case, the granulated sugar would get treated like the other dry ingredients, and you would mix the liquid sugar with the other wet ingredients. So depending on the sugar you are baking with, it can fall under a wet ingredient or a dry ingredient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Fruit<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Regardless of the type of fruit you're using to make your fruit muffins, it's important to toss them in a little flour to give them a fine coating. The flour plays two roles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. the flour coating helps anchor the fruit in the batter<\/strong>: the flour will absorb some liquid from the surrounding batter, thus locking the fruit pieces in place and preventing the fruit from sinking to the bottom of the muffin. Note with gluten-free baked goods, this technique might not help, as I noticed with this gluten-free raspberry cake<\/a>.<\/li>
    2. the flour can absorb some of the fruit juices<\/strong> the pieces release as they heat up, which prevent the muffin crumb from becoming too wet<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Using frozen fruit<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

      Using frozen fruit is not only convenient, it means that you can make any type of fruit muffin, regardless of what's in season. But there's another bonus to baking with frozen fruit: you don't have to defrost frozen fruit to incorporate it in your next batch of muffins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Folding frozen fruit into batters like a fruit muffin batter ensures you don't crush the fruit, especially if it's delicate. This is especially important when baking with delicate berries, like blueberries and raspberries that will turn to smush when pressed and introduce excess liquid into the batter, leading to gummy patches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I've successfully used frozen fruit in these honey blueberry muffins<\/a>. In fact, if you let the blueberries defrost, you can end up dying the batter blue and the blueberries turn the muffins green<\/a> as the muffins bake!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I've used frozen rhubarb in these rhubarb muffins with sour cream<\/a> and that worked out beautifully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Using fresh fruit<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

      You can add chopped fresh fruit to your muffins, like chopped plums in these plum muffins<\/a>. These strawberry rhubarb muffins with streusel topping<\/a> are made with chopped fresh strawberries and chopped fresh rhubarb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Fresh local berries are perfect for baking muffins, like red currants in these simple red currant muffins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      You can add cranberries to muffin batters, either fresh or frozen, but I've also baked muffins with poached cranberries like these cranberry gingerbread muffins<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The muffin recipe ratio<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      Muffins are made from the same basic ingredients, just like other baked goods, but what makes a baked good a muffin lies in the ratio or the proportions of the ingredients relative to each other. You could take flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and milk or sour cream to make a vanilla cake with milk chocolate frosting<\/a>, or you could use those same ingredients to make muffins. The thing that sets them apart is the ratio of ingredients or the proportions you use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For most of my fruit muffin recipes, I try to use the following ratio<\/strong> or proportions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n