It took me a long time to get this recipe right but once I did, I have used it ever since. There was one batch of these muffins I made when I was still trying to figuring out the perfect recipe….
It was a disaster! The muffins were in the oven for about 30 minutes, and yet they didn’t look like they had been in the oven at all. They were still the same color as when they were batter, so I left them in for a bit longer. However when I took them out, they were as hard as rocks – and still the same color as when they were still batter. You could have used these things as weapons! They couldn’t even come out of the muffin tins, and we had to throw out the whole muffin tin. This has become a story that has come up several times over the years. My husband likes to remind of this every once in awhile.
Materials & Ingredients:
- 1 cup liquid measuring cup
- 1 medium sized-mixing bowl
- measuring spoons
- dry ingredients measuring cups
- muffin baking tin
- spoon
1 ½ cups flour ** (see notes on flour below)
¾ cup sugar
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
Milk
Chocolate chips (or whatever you want to put in your muffins)
One of the reasons I believe it’s the perfect muffin recipe is because it works well with alterations. I made them with chocolate chips this time around, but you can use anything – I love using raspberries. You can add oatmeal, or change the flour making them with either whole wheat or white flour.
Let’s get started!
First, mix the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder in the mixing bowl.
Note: something I’ve learned about whole wheat flour through trial and error – If you want to change it to a whole wheat muffin, replace half the white flour with whole wheat. NOT the whole amount. What you get when you replace the whole amount is a very dense muffin that you can’t even classify as a muffin anymore. It’s basically like eating a really thick piece of cake from Starbucks (you know the ones I’m talking about…) It is very dense, and you can’t taste anything but wheat goo. Watching my family try to eat them was funny…for me. It looked like someone had fed peanut butter to a dog.
Put vegetable oil and the egg in the liquid measuring cup. Add milk to the measuring cup until the whole thing equals 1 cup.
Add liquids to the dry ingredients. When mixing the liquid and dry ingredients, do not stir too much. You want lumps in the batter. Your muffins will come out rough and ‘rustic’ looking, but if you stir the batter too much, you will lose the air in the batter and your muffins will be flat and the consistency of them won’t be wrong. Here is your take-away from this: Never over-mix your batter.
Make sure you leave lumps in your batter for the best baked texture.
Preheat the oven 400C, pour batter in to prepared muffin tins, and bake for 20-25 minutes. Your kitchen will have the smell of fresh baking first thing in the morning, and your new favorite muffins will make one incredible breakfast!
Let me know what amazing flavours you make with this recipe. I’m interested to know how people use it.
Guest blogger Andrea Santos is an Interior Decorator by day, amateur baker by night. This Torontonian believes all good things should be experienced with good food. She is the owner of I Was Here Designs in Toronto, and continues her quest to make the perfect meringue.
