Sometimes not everything is going to go as planned when you’re baking things. You might go to make a batch of muffins and find out that they’re not quite as good as you would like them to be.
There are times when they’ll still be edible, but they will be too crumbly to eat like normal. You might also have situations where the bottoms of the muffins are burned, but the top parts are still good.
While it is frustrating to have stuff like this happen, it isn’t something that you should fret over too much. If you’re someone who hates wasting food, you might want to try to utilize these “ruined muffins” in some way instead of just throwing them out.
Read on to learn what you can do with ruined muffins so you know your options.
1 – Eat the Good Parts
Probably the most common solution to the ruined muffin conundrum is to just try to eat the good parts. As mentioned above, you’ll often find that parts of them will still be quite good to eat.
You could just take the tops and eat those if you would like to. In fact, there are many people who just like eating the muffin tops anyway, and this wouldn’t be too unusual.
Examine the muffins and try to determine if parts of them are still good. If they are, you can just eat the good parts at your leisure. The muffins certainly won’t look as presentable as they should, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be enjoyable.
Give this a shot if you don’t like wasting food or if you’re hungry and just need a snack. If you don’t have enough ingredients to make another batch of muffins, you might as well get something out of your hard work.
Some people like to dip bits of muffins into their coffee as well, and this could make it taste better. If you think that parts of the muffins that you made taste good, don’t hesitate to just eat them.
2 – Make Bread Pudding

Many muffin recipes will turn out a bit too dry if you make some mistakes, and this might make you think that they wouldn’t be great to eat. You could make something good out of them if you’d like to, though.
There are people who utilize dry muffins to create bread pudding, and this isn’t going to be very difficult to do. All you need to do is find a muffin bread pudding recipe and follow it to get good results.
These muffin bread pudding recipes will call for crumbled muffins, and you should have an easy time getting crumbly bits that are good from your failed muffins. Even if the muffins are a bit dry, they can still turn out pretty well when you turn them into bread pudding.
It’s good to be able to do something useful with the muffins that didn’t turn out perfectly. Bread pudding is tasty, and everyone should enjoy it even if it wasn’t originally your intention to it.
3 – Create a Crumbly Topping for Another Dish

Having crumbly muffins at your disposal gives you many possibilities to consider. You could take the time to make a crumbly topping that can be used with other types of dishes.
Add a little bit of brown sugar and some butter to the crumbled up muffins to create a great topping. You’re going to need to do some additional baking, but it’ll turn out nicely.
Lots of people use this type of crumble topping along with vanilla ice cream or other things of that nature. It could even be a good topping for certain types of cobbler depending on the muffin flavor that you were baking.
4 – Make Some Cake Balls
Cake balls could be made using the crumbly bits of muffins that you have available to you. This is essentially going to involve making a type of apple butter frosting and then rolling up balls of the muffin crumbles.
Once you’ve rolled up the balls, you’re going to either refrigerate or freeze them for some time. After they’re nicely chilled, you’ll be able to eat them as a dessert that should hit the spot.
It might taste a bit better if you choose to use some type of icing as well, but you might not wish to go overboard since the cake balls aren’t likely that large. A little bit of cream cheese icing would work well as a topping for cake balls that were made using muffins, but you can decide what to do based on your tastes.
5 – Create a Trifle

It’s pretty common for bakers to make trifles out of pastries that have turned out wrong in some way. You can take the muffin crumbles and layer them with pudding and fruit in some type of container.
Most people like to use glass containers when making trifles because it makes it easy to see the layers. You just keep layering muffin crumbles, pudding, and fruit up to the top.
The combination of pudding and fruit that you decide to utilize is up to you. It’s advisable to use whatever you think would go well with the type of muffins that you were trying to make.
One good idea could be to make a trifle that utilizes walnuts, banana chunks, muffin crumbles, and vanilla pudding. That could be very tasty, and it won’t take long at all for you to make this dish.
You might wish to refrigerate the trifle dessert for a time before you attempt to serve it. Even so, it’s going to be ready for you to enjoy in a timely fashion.
6 – Try to Revive the Muffins
Another good idea is to try to revive the muffins that you think are ruined. Sometimes thinking that something is ruined isn’t quite true, and it really depends on what is wrong with the muffins.
For example, if they are just too dry due to sitting out for too long, you can try to revive them using some water. What you do is sprinkle the muffins with water before placing them in a paper bag.
You can then place it in an oven for around 10 seconds in an attempt to revive them. The moisture created by the steam will bring the muffins back to life, and they won’t be so dry any longer.
7 – Throw the Muffins Away
Finally, if your muffins just aren’t any good, you might want to go ahead and throw them away. There isn’t much of a point in trying to choke down muffins that just turned out incredibly wrong.
If your muffins are very burnt or if the flavor is just off in some way, it might not be worth attempting to save them. You have to examine them yourself and make a good call on your own.
It will seem like a bit of a waste to throw something out that you spent so much time on, but things do go wrong. You can’t always save your mistakes when you make a few culinary errors, and you might be better off moving on.
Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.