How long should I bake my muffins?

Muffins offer all the irresistible aromas and straight-from-the-oven yumminess of home baking without any of the palaver.

For the beginner-baker, they are the easy alternative to cakes and biscuits, without the time-consuming processes such as creaming of butter or the nervous wait to see if the sponge will rise.

Making a muffin batter involves little more than mixing together dry and wet ingredients. And with a couple of good foundation recipes – one for savoury and one for sweet – it’s easy to improvise and add the ingredients you love (or have on hand).

“You can have muffins for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” says Jenna Marie Jaede, who with Joanna Stiern are the cupcake girls from My Kitchen Rules. “Nothing is impossible. You’ve just got to be creative with your ingredients and think what goes with that.” There are, however, a few rules to make sure your muffins rise into perfect golden-brown domes every time.

The batter

A good muffin relies on having a batter that isn’t too runny, isn’t too stiff – it needs to be juuuuust right.

“It’s all about balance. Once you get the consistency of the batter right, it’s pretty foolproof,” says Enzo Titaro, owner/baker of Jenny’s Gourmet Baker.

Enzo has provided two base recipes for sweet and savoury muffins (see below). However, be careful the other ingredients you add don’t alter the balance of dry and liquid .

“Make sure the things you are including aren’t ground too fine,” Enzo says. “Once the nuts etc are too fine, they start to replace the flour in the recipe and the muffins will become too dry.”

Enzo also recommends using self-raising flour rather than trying to measure out tiny quantities of baking powder.

A little stir

Most muffin recipes call for the dry and wet ingredients to be brought together in separate containers, before being combined. Unlike cakes where it is often important to stir ingredients thoroughly, muffins work better with a gentle touch.

“If you overmix the batter, the glutens in the flour will become tough and the muffin will be rubbery,” Enzo says.

“Stir until it just comes together. It doesn’t even matter if it is a little bit lumpy.”

Muffin mania

Start the cupcake girls talking about muffin possibilites and the ideas bounce between them punctuatated by laughter and loud “yums”.

Jenna loves to make a muffin with white and dark chocolate pieces and recommends pouring over a sugar syrup while it is hot to keep it moist.

She’s also a fan of orange and poppyseed with an orange syrup, or topping a muffin with ganache and a slice of strawberry “for some extra wow factor”. “I think these muffins are turning into cupcakes,” Jo says.

Banana and walnut muffins are quickly transformed with the addition of crushed pineapple to become hummingbird muffins, then given a coconut and Malibu icing and a slice of dehydrated pineapple. “You can’t just make a plain, boring muffin,” Jenna says.

“You have to give it a little bit of something.”

On the savoury side, the MKR girls come up with a pizza muffin with olive, sundried tomato, roasted capsicum and “maybe a goat’s cheese surprise in the middle”.

Other suggestions include leek and crumbled roquefort and a pink muffin of beetroot and goat’s cheese. Enzo says blueberry is the most popular muffin by far at his bakery.

Mix and match

Why stop with one muffin variety? “You can make a big batch of batter, divide it between two or three bowls and make up different muffins,” Enzo says.

“Say to your kids ‘go crazy and throw in what you want’ – sultanas, nuts, Smarties or sprinkles. “

In the oven

Enzo recommends baking muffins at 180-200C. The temperature will depend on both the kind of muffin and different ovens.

“If the temperature is too low, you won’t get peak on muffin,” he says. “If it is too high, you will get a crack at the top. I prefer to use muffin tin with paper cups. The muffins stay a lot moister.

“If they are cooked straight in the tin, they get a crust around them that is all right if you are eating straight away but they will dry out more quickly.”

Enzo says sweet muffins will keep better than savoury because the sugar acts as a preservative and keeps the muffin moist.

The only muffin recipes you will ever need

Baker Enzo Titaro has developed two master muffin recipes that can be used with endless variations.

• Sweet muffin master recipe
• Savoury muffin master recipe

Information in this article is correct as of 26 February 2013.