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5 Simple Ways to Make Your Muffins Rise Higher

5 Simple Ways to Make Your Muffins Rise Higher

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Muffins work well as a snack or a dessert, and they’re something that most people enjoy to eat. If you’re new to making them, you might run into an occasional problem, though.

For example, you might take the muffins out of the oven to discover that they haven’t risen as much as you hoped they would. You want them to have beautiful domed tops, but they might not come out looking this way if something went slightly wrong.

Read on to learn how to make muffins rise higher. This should help you to get the best results so they’ll look fantastic while also being very tasty.

1 – Get the Temperature Right

Oven Thermometer

The first piece of advice that you’ll want to pay attention to has to do with the temperature. If you try to bake the muffins at a temperature that is not ideal, you’ll be more likely to encounter mishaps.

For example, many people have experienced having muffins spill over while baking. Some of the batter might even drip down into the oven and this will create a terrible smell.

Most conventional muffin recipes say that it’s best to bake them at somewhere between 325 degrees Fahrenheit and 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead of doing this, it’s going to be better to bake them at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

You might be worried that this won’t work out since the muffin recipes advise against baking at such a high temperature. However, it’s going to work to your advantage when you’re trying to get the muffins to rise higher.

Essentially, baking at a higher temperature is going to activate the leavening agent faster. This should make the muffins more likely to rise significantly.

Of course, you won’t be able to bake them for as long when you set the temperature higher. Generally, you should be able to get good results when baking muffins between eighteen and twenty minutes at this temperature.

You might need to experiment a little bit depending on the type of muffins that you’re making. It should eventually be possible to pinpoint the best time.

2 – Use Room-Temperature Ingredients

Removing Eggs from the Fridge

A common mistake that many people make when baking is that they use cold ingredients. You might pull ingredients right out of the refrigerator and just start mixing up muffin batter.

You can bake muffins this way if you want to, but you won’t get the best results. It’s going to be much better if you choose to use room-temperature ingredients.

This means that you should pull your ingredients out of the refrigerator ahead of time. Allow ingredients such as eggs and butter to warm up before you start using them.

If you use cold ingredients to make the batter, things won’t turn out quite right. It might impact the rising process and it’ll keep you from achieving your goal.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take that long for the ingredients to warm up to room temperature. If you remember to avoid using cold ingredients, it should be easier to get good results.

You could easily just set the ingredients that you need out on the counter an hour before you plan to get started. Everything will be ready by the time you decide to start mixing the batter.

3 – Don’t Wait Too Long to Put the Muffins in the Oven

Putting Muffin Batter in the Oven

Waiting too long after mixing the batter to put the muffins in the oven would be a mistake. If you wait several minutes after mixing the batter to put the muffins in the oven, they might not rise as much as you want them to.

If you’re using baking soda in your recipe, it’s going to be especially important to pay attention to this tip. Waiting too long could have a negative impact on the leavening agent and you might not have the muffins form the domed tops that you’re hoping for.

As soon as you finish mixing the batter, it’s going to be wise to pour it into the muffin tins. Put the tins in the oven to start baking as soon as you can.

This does mean that you should preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit ahead of time so that it will be good to go. You don’t want to have to sit around waiting for the oven to finish preheating.

So why does this matter so much? Well, when you mix the wet and dry ingredients, the leavening process will start to work.

If you wait around too long before baking the batter, things won’t work normally. You might get the muffins to rise a bit, but they won’t rise nearly as high as they could if you had been faster.

4 – Try to Make Thick Batter

Pouring Thick Batter into Liners

Next, it’s important to try to make the muffin batter as thick as you can. The thin batter doesn’t seem to do as well when you’re trying to make full, fluffy muffins.

Generally, when the batter comes out too thin, it’s going to be because you have too many liquid ingredients. You can thicken the batter up by adjusting things a bit.

Try using more flour so that it will turn out nice and thick instead of being a bit soupy. It also might be necessary to use slightly less butter or oil depending on the situation.

When you’re judging the consistency of the batter, it’s important to remember that you want it to be easy to transfer the batter with a spoon. You don’t want the batter to be so soupy that you could pour it.

Sometimes it might be necessary to play around with the ingredients to get things just right. You could also try following a different muffin recipe if you think that the current one that you’re using isn’t quite good enough.

5 – Fill the Muffin Tins Properly

Muffins with Dome Tops

Filling the muffin tins properly will also help you to get the high muffins with domed tops that you want. If you follow all of the advice above and fill the tins all the way, you should get things to turn out right.

This does fly in the face of normal muffin advice that you find in recipes. Most people say that filling the muffin tin half full or three-fourths full is the way to go, but that won’t work here.

When you fill the tins all the way, you’re going to have more batter to work with. More batter makes it more likely that the muffins will be able to rise higher.

You want the muffin tins to be nearly full before you stop filling them. The batter shouldn’t be flowing over the edges.

Sometimes going this route will mean that you won’t have enough batter to bake twelve muffins. You might wind up with nine or so instead.

In this case, you should fill the empty muffin slots with water. This helps the baking process to go better.

If you have thick batter and you got the muffins in the oven right away, the leavening process should begin. You’ll be able to see the muffins rise and they should form domes.

This will allow you to get the most beautiful muffins that you possibly can. If one part of the process is off, you might not have things turn out well, though.

Final Thoughts

Chocolate Muffins

There is a lot to remember when you’re trying to get muffins to turn out perfectly. If you want your muffins to have the gorgeous domed tops that you see when you go to buy them at a bakery, you’ll need to work for it.

Luckily, it isn’t that hard to pull this off when you get used to the process. You have to ensure that you’re baking them at a high enough temperature so that they will rise quickly.

It’s also necessary to use room-temperature ingredients when making the batter. If you use cold ingredients, it can throw everything off.

You must get the batter thick enough before you move forward. Ensure that it isn’t soupy because that type of batter won’t rise very well at all.

Once you make the batter, it’s important to avoid waiting too long to start baking the muffins. You should fill the tins right away and get them into the oven.

Filling the tin until things are almost full will be the right way to go. You just don’t want the muffin batter to start pouring over the edges.

If you can remember to do things this way every time that you make muffins, you should be able to get consistent results. This is the ideal way to get domed muffins that look very presentable.

You’ll be able to feel proud to serve your family the most gorgeous muffins. They’ll taste delectable and you’ll likely want to start making them more often now that you know what you’re doing.

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Stuart

Wednesday 22nd of February 2023

Thank you, you made it so simple and uncomplicated, making a batch today!

Sarah Bridenstine

Friday 17th of March 2023

Hi Stuart!

So glad I could help. I hope they turned out great!

Mary

Monday 30th of January 2023

I added some rolled oats, wheat germ, ground flax seed and bran to these muffins to make a healthier breakfast muffin. Filled the greased muffin Tim full, topped a teaspoon of light brown sugar and baked at 400 for 5 minutes, the baked at 350 for about 12 minutes. They came out perfect.

Jennifer

Sunday 6th of March 2022

Thanks for the info, but where are the recipes?

Freda

Monday 31st of January 2022

Thank you for your very clear/detailed instructions.

Anju Malik

Thursday 13th of January 2022

How much Flour is equal to 1 cup for muffins

Karla

Wednesday 31st of August 2022

@bob, 120 Grams

bob

Friday 1st of July 2022

@Anju Malik, What???????? 1 cup is 1 cup for anything