how to make muffins more moist

The all-time basic muffin recipe to use every bit a base for infinite season combinations

This basic muffin recipe is merely like the ones you find in a baker. These muffins are fluffy, buttery and super simple to customize. Stir in your favorite mix-ins and create countless bakery-style muffin flavors and then everyone can accept the flavor they want.

My favorite muffins are baker-way blueberry muffins but my daughter loves chocolate fleck muffins. My husband likes to add in dried fruit and nuts like my cranberry almond orange muffins for a quick and salubrious start to the mean solar day.

This might come as a surprise to some but you don't necessarily need a new recipe for every unmarried variation of baked appurtenances. Nearly bakers have a perfected base recipe for everything from sugar cookies, vanilla cake, cupcakes, vanilla buttercream frosting and of course muffins.

Then, they tweak that ane recipe with dissimilar extracts, spices, and mix-ins. Mix-ins are things that don't affect the chemistry of the base of operations recipe like nuts and fruits. Adding in things like pumpkin, banana or chocolate is also possible but tin can accept a bit more testing to make sure the final upshot is all the same balanced.

ingredients in small glass bowls to be mixed into basic muffin batter

From this 1 base recipe, you can create hundreds of unique flavor combinations! And then fun huh! Simply follow the basic muffin recipe beneath and stir in your favorite additional ingredients.

What makes this the perfect basic muffin recipe

These soft and fluffy muffins become their amazing texture from creaming together the butter and the carbohydrate first, then adding in eggs, then finishing with the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture.

Be conscientious non to over-mix or you can get tunneling. Tunneling is when the gluten in the flour becomes over-developed and traps air inside the baked good. Tunneling is groovy for staff of life, not and then great for muffins.

cranberry orange muffins made from the basic muffin recipe

Block Flour – Makes these muffins super tender and fluffy. If yous can't find cake flour yous can use all-purpose flour instead. For every 1 cup (5 ounces) of flour, have out 2 Tablespoons of flour and supplant with cornstarch. So sift. (only for this recipe, not for my vanilla cake recipe).
Buttermilk – Adds a slightly tangy flavor and the acerbity of the buttermilk breaks downwards the gluten in the flour, resulting in a more tender muffin. No buttermilk? Only add one Tablespoon of white vinegar to 1 loving cup of regular milk and permit it sit for 10 minutes.
Butter – Gives the muffins a delicious flavor and adds moisture. Apply high-quality butter like plugra or kerrigold for the best flavor!
Blistering Powder & Blistering Soda – Muffins take a lot of rising agent to become those big fluffy muffin tops. If yous're at a loftier-altitude, brand sure you make some adjustments.
Bake At A Loftier Temperature – Baking at a college heat gives these muffins a nice lift and makes them super fluffy.

I like to acme my muffins with sparkling sugar. This gives the muffins that bakery-way look at the saccharide actual helps proceed the muffins moist. Carbohydrate is hygroscopic and attacts moisture from the air which is why baked goods with more than sugar in them (similar loftier-fructose corn syrup) stay moister for longer. Non that I'm suggesting yous put high-fructose corn syrup in your muffins (yuk).

three basic muffins with sparkling sugar on top of brown paper

Muffin flavor combinations

Now for the fun part! Coming upwards with fun flavors! It's and then easy to customize your basic muffin recipe into pretty much anything. Demand ideas? Check out the suggestions below. You can add together in about 1 cup without affecting the recipe.

If the add-in is very moist, reduce the amount you add together in to ane/2 cup. Muffins with fresh fruit or berries must stay refrigerated to preclude molding.

Berries – blueberries, blackberries, raspberries (fresh or frozen)
Fresh Fruit – Chopped strawberries, peaches, apples, pears (fresh is all-time)
Nuts – Toasted almonds, candied pecans, macadamia nuts, walnuts, pistachios
Dried Fruit – Cranberries, craisins, strawberries, toasted kokosnoot, cherries
Processed – Chocolate chips, mini M&Yard, caramel bits

basic muffin recipe with add-ins

Other means to customize the bones muffin recipe

Aside from mix-ins, there are other ways to customize your muffin recipe without any major adjustments.

Spices – Add together in any amount of spices you similar such equally cinnamon, clove, ginger or nutmeg to your muffin concoction
Zest – Add together in fruit zest similar lime, lemon or orange to accent your add-ins
Sugar – Supersede half or all of your sugar with brown saccharide for a warmer flavor
Butter – Supplant half or all of the butter with chocolate-brown butter for a deeper, toastier flavor

basic muffin recipe with lemon zest and fresh blueberries

What's the difference between muffins and cupcakes?

Y'all might be wondering what the deviation is between a muffin and a cupcake. Is there a divergence? Some might say a muffin is only a cupcake without frosting. But there are a few other differences as well.

A muffin tends to be a little dryer and denser than a cupcake. It tin be savory or sweet (similar to a scone). Replace the white flour with whole wheat and oats and they are considered a good for you breakfast option. A cupcake is meant to gustatory modality exactly like a block but smaller. Very moist, sweet and covered in a frosting of some sort.

Cupcakes are not considered healthy unless you lot count eating only one cupcake instead of a whole slice a diet plan (which I may or may non be guilty of).

different muffin combinations made from the same basic muffin recipe on a blue cookie sheet

How can you make muffins more moist?

But because a muffin is meant to exist dryer than a cupcake doesn't mean you want to forget about moisture altogether. If your cupcakes seem too dry, you can add in some additional ingredients to make them more than moist.

Replace half the milk with yogurt or sour cream for boosted moisture and tanginess
Add in 1/four cup applesauce for added moisture, don't worry, this won't make your cupcakes sense of taste like apples.
Replace half the sugar with brownish sugar. The molasses in chocolate-brown sugar adds more moisture and flavor to the recipe.
Replace 2 tablespoons of sugar with honey, molasses or corn syrup. These ingredients are hygroscopic meaning they attract moisture from the air and keep those muffins nice and moist!
Replace half the butter with vegetable oil. Cream the butter and oil with the sugar every bit usual. Oil keeps the muffins from tasting dry, especially if they demand to stay refrigerated (muffins with fresh fruit)
Keep muffins at room temperature. Unless your muffins have fruit in them, there's not a reason to keep them refrigerated. Refrigeration just dries out baked appurtenances and makes the butter in them cold. Cold butter tends to gustatory modality dry out in broiled goodies.

Did You Make This Recipe? Leave a rating and tell me how it went!

Basic Muffin Recipe

Employ this basic muffin recipe as a base for unlimited flavor combinations! These muffins are light, fluffy and buttery. So delicious!

Print Charge per unit Never Miss A Cake

Prep Fourth dimension: ten mins

Cook Time: twenty mins

Serves: 12 muffins

Calories: 220 kcal

Ingredients

▢ four ounces (113 g) unsalted butter (1/2 cup) softened
▢ five ounces (142 m) granulated sugar (3/iv cup)
▢ ii large eggs room temperature
▢ 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
▢ 10 ounces (284 g) block flour (2 cups)
▢ three teaspoons baking powder
▢ 1 teaspoon baking soda
▢ one/ii tsp salt
▢ eight ounces (227 g) buttermilk (i cup) room temperature
▢ 3 Tablespoons sanding sugar (optional for sprinkling on top)

Equipment

▢
Mixer (stand or handheld)

Instructions

IMPORTANT: Make sure all your ingredients are at room temp (see notes at the lesser of the recipe)
Preheat your oven to 400ºF - Line a muffin tin with newspaper liners.
Sift together your flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Cream together your butter and sugar in a medium basin with your mixer until light and fluffy
Add in your egg and vanilla. Go on creaming until stake in colour
While mixing on low, add in i/3 of your flour mixture, then 1/iii of your buttermilk. Repeat two more times until just combined. Do non overmix.
Fold in your desired mix-ins such as fruit, nuts or spices.
Fill your liners all the style to the superlative with muffin concoction. Top with more mix-ins if desired and sparkling carbohydrate.
Bake for fifteen-twenty minutes or until edges brainstorm to slightly brown and a wooden skewer comes out cleanly when inserted into the center of the muffin.
Permit your muffins cool in the pan for x minutes and then move them to a cooling rack to cool the rest of the fashion.

Notes

Important Things To Annotation Before Y'all Start

i. Bring all your ingredients to room temperature or even a fiddling warm (eggs, buttermilk, butter, etc) to ensure your batter does non break or curdle.

2. Use a calibration to weigh your ingredients (including liquids) unless otherwise instructed (Tablespoons, teaspoons, compression etc). Metric measurements are available in the recipe carte du jour. Scaled ingredients are much more than accurate than using cups and assist ensure the success of your recipe.

3. Practice Mise en Place (everything in information technology's identify). Measure out your ingredients alee of fourth dimension and have them ready earlier you lot start mixing to reduce the chances of accidentally leaving something out.

4. If the recipe calls for specific ingredients like cake flour, replacing information technology with all purpose flour and cornstarch is not recommended unless specified in the recipe that it's ok. Substituting ingredients may cause this recipe to neglect.