Today on The Stay At Home Chef
I'm showing you my master muffin recipe.
Instead of giving you dozens of recipes for different flavors of muffins,
today I'm sharing my master muffin recipe, which you can use to make almost any flavor,
and it's super easy.
Start by preheating your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper baking cups.
Then I like to give mine just a spritz of nonstick cooking spray, right on those paper baking cups,
to prevent the muffins from sticking.
Now it's time to put together our batter.
First I'm going to demonstrate a basic muffin batter, and then I'm going to show you 5 different variations,
each demonstrating a different way that you can build upon the base recipe.
The batter starts with 1/2 cup of softened salted butter,
and 1 cup of granulated sugar.
We're going to use a hand mixer to cream this together.
At first this mixture will be lumpy, but keep on mixing for about 2 minutes.
After 2 minutes your sugar and butter will be well combined, and it'll be a smooth, paste-like, creamy consistency.
Then you'll add in 2 large eggs, and mix this briefly until just combined,
about 30 seconds.
Then I'm going to add in 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, or you can use other flavors of extract,
like almond extract, orange extract, lemon extract.
Those are all super popular options.
For the lemon and citrus extracts I recommend only using 1/2 teaspoon of those,
and combining that with 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
You'll also need 2 teaspoons of baking powder,
and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
This is also the point where you'd add in any spices like cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice.
We're gonna give this a quick mix just to combine, about 10 seconds.
Now at this point it's time to ditch our hand mixer and grab a rubber spatula.
Add in half of your all-purpose flour.
You're going to use 2 cups total, so you're going to add in 1 cup right now.
Then use the rubber spatula to stir this in.
Once all those white specks of flour start to disappear, you'll pour in 1/2 cup of either milk or buttermilk.
Buttermilk is going to give you a little bit of a poofier muffin.
And you'll stir this in as well until it's well combined.
Last you'll add in the remaining 1 cup of all-purpose flour.
Stir this together scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure that everything gets mixed in.
Now if you're gonna add anything into your muffins, like dried fruit, chocolate chips, or berries,
now would be the time to do so.
but I'll show you that in just a minute.
Your batter should be thick but also spreadable.
We're gonna divide the batter up amongst our 12 muffin cups, and you should fill each one about 2/3 of the way full.
It's always a little bit hard to tell what's 2/3 or what's 3/4, so just try to divide your batter up as evenly as possible,
because this does make 12 muffins.
You can let your muffin batter rest for about 15 minutes before popping it in the oven,
or if you're making a larger batch it's totally okay to let it rest in between cooking different batches.
Bake your muffins in the 425 degree oven for 7 minutes.
After 7 minutes reduce the temperature on your oven to 350 degrees without opening the oven door.
Continue baking for 12-15 minutes, and watch them carefully,
as the cooking time will vary a little bit depending on your oven.
Now let's start going over some variations, starting with a lemon blueberry muffin.
This is great because it demonstrates both using another flavor of extract as well as adding in fresh fruit.
I've already creamed together the sugar and butter and added in the eggs,
so now I'm going to add in 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract,
and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract before adding in my baking powder and salt.
Continue on with the rest of the recipe adding in the flour and buttermilk.
Once you have your batter finished you'll add in 1 cup of fresh blueberries,
or frozen even, you can use those too.
Then this is optional but I like to add in the zest of 1 lemon, so about 1 tablespoon of lemon zest.
Then simply fold this in.
Then it's just a matter of once again dividing the batter evenly amongst the 12 muffin cups.
One fun topping you can experiment with is sprinkling on about 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar on top of your muffins.
This gives it a nice little crunchy sweet top, and then of course bake these just as we did before.
Next up i'm going to show you how to make a chocolate version.
For a chocolate version you'll use your butter and sugar again just like before,
but this time you'll add in 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, unsweetened cocoa powder,
and cream that in with it.
From here you'll proceed with the rest of the master muffin recipe by adding in eggs,
baking powder, salt, vanilla extract, all-purpose flour, and milk or buttermilk.
The addition of the cocoa powder really doesn't do much to change the texture of the final batter.
Then just for fun i'm going to add in 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips,
and fold those in.
Even though you can mix and match add-ins, you want to total any additions that you make,
like chocolate chips, or nuts, or dried fruit, to 1 cup total.
Next i'm going to show you one of my very favorite muffin hacks
that allows you to switch up with all sorts of different flavors by using instant pudding.
This time you're only going to add in 3/4 cup of granulated sugar,
because you're going to replace that additional 1/4 cup with a 3.4 ounce package of instant pudding mix,
and this time I'm using pistachio because it's one of my favorite flavors.
Cream this together and then proceed with the master muffin recipe as directed.
You could even fold in some chopped pistachios if you wanted.
This variation is fun because there's just so many different flavors of instant pudding out there.
It makes it really easy to mix and match flavors really quickly without having to buy a bunch of extracts.
Next I want to show just how easy it is to mix and match add-ins
to add a little bit of flavor to the base recipe without too much hassle.
So I'm going to show you a cranberry white chocolate chip with a little bit of orange zest.
This is the master recipe with no alterations to it.
I'm going to add in 1/2 cup of dried cranberries because, like I said before, we're going to use 1 cup of add-ins total.
That means that the white chocolate chips will also come in at 1/2 cup for 1 cup total.
I didn't have any orange extract today but that's okay because, a little bit of orange zest,
1-2 tablespoons total, will add just a hint of orange flavor.
Once again it's simply a matter of folding this in until the ingredients are evenly distributed.
You can do chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, really the possibilities are endless.
Last I want to show you how to add in spices which is super easy, and I really don't have to show you,
but I thought it would be fun to show a cinnamon muffin with cinnamon chips folded in,
topped with a brown sugar streusel, and that's just delicious.
I've already creamed together the butter and sugar, added in the eggs, baking powder, salt, and vanilla extract,
and now I'm going to add in 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
You can use between 1/2 teaspoon and 1 full teaspoon,
it really just depends on how pronounced you want that cinnamon flavor to be.
Finish with the rest of the master muffin recipe by adding in the flour and buttermilk.
I'm going to fold in 1 cup of cinnamon chips,
which are delicious but they can be a little harder to find when it's not the holidays.
Go ahead and divide up the batter in your prepared muffin cups before making your streusel topping.
A streusel is easy to make and it is a decadent addition to lots of different flavors of muffins.
It starts with 1/4 cup of cold, cubed butter,
then you'll add in 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour,
adding in 1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
Then use a pastry cutter or you can use 2 knives cutting across each other like this.
Then you want to cut this all together until it resembles a coarse meal or sand.
Then you want to sprinkle this generously on top of your muffin batter.
It's almost like having little piles of sand on top of each muffin, and of course the baking time on all of these are the same.
Now you know how to make pretty much any flavor of muffin that you want using one master recipe.
Thanks for watching.
You can find the full written recipe as well as other flavor ideas in the video description.
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