Why do my muffins always turn out squidgy and 'topless'?

[franch]

I want them nice and light, spilling pleasingly over the tops of their cases! Whatever recipe I use they always seem to stick squidgily to the inside of the case, and don't rise enough. I know about the minimal-mixing-of-wet-ingredients-into-dry thing, which I think I am doing - but do I need to do even less?

So do mine and there were a lot of tips on MN earlier, you could use the search and see the earlier posts. It might be that we both overmix the mixture.

The will rise a bit more if you have the oven a bit hotter. Turn it up 10 degrees for the next batch and see if it makes a difference.

Mine always stick to the inside of the case if I don't let them cool completely first.

Also, I always use a spatula to mix so that I can get all the dry flour off the edge/bottom of the bowl without doing lots of mixing.

What recipy do you use, bran?

do you have the Susan Reimer book? I have had 100% success from her recipes - particular favourite is Oat Chocolate Chip Muffins. yum!

what recipe do you use? I bake muffins quite alot and never have that trouble.. I do use american cups in my measurements... do you use vegtable oil? as that normally makes them much stickier... and do you use self raising flour? or normal with baking powder?

I use Susan Reimer's book too. It's fab. I like her yoghurt and oats one best, but I also use the basic recipe a lot as it's very quick. I just chuck in whatever fruit I have handy, I usually have some frozen blueberries or raspberries if I don't have any suitable fresh fruit.

Thanks all. Will try hotter oven bran, and spatula. Have had the Reimer book recommended to me a lot but am not sure better recipes will help me as I've tried several different ones from different sources - most recently Nigella's, as posted for me by McDreamy. That uses butter (no veg oil), plain flour, baking powder and bicarb.

tablespoon of vinegar

you don't taste it but it reacts with the baking powder or summat and they rise v well

or if mmaking fruity muffins and recipe suggests milk / other liquid, substitute orange juice for smae effect.

Can't find your thread fedda, maybe because search facility isn't working properly at the moment - could you link to it?

ok I have just looked up the "Basic" recipe susan riemer (i don't have the book not heard of her before) uses and to be honest I think thats your problem right there.. her recipe calls for oil which alot of muffins do but I find it make the batter very heavy and dosent always rise so well.. I stopped using oil years ago...and never have had trouble with over mixed muffin mix, i don't think it makes a diffrence does it?

my favorite fruit muffin recipe is this one.

blueberry oatmeal muffins

recipezaar has some good muffin recipes I'll have a look if you like.

But I don't have the Reimer book either, have never used her recipes and used butter not veg oil this time at least meridian!

Vinegar and OJ MrsB! Ok ...

have used balsamic vinegar in a recipe recently.. for Red Velvet cupcakes .. the thread is on here.. not tried OJ.. but I would assume its the same principle of the chemical reaction between the baking powder and the acid in the vinegar.. cupcakes tasted very nice, and makes sense but still strange in cakes though you don't taste the vinegar once baked... mind I practically failed chemistry anyway

Meridian, the people with the Riemer book are happy with their muffins. Her muffin recipes use either butter or oil, I usually use oil and it always comes out fine.

sorry just trying to be helpful.

Hi, franch, what link couldn't you open? I can't recall saying about my thread and I have many threads on which I'm posting. Please, let me know what you ment I'll happily post it for you

fedda I mean the thread with the tips that you mentioned in your post above - I did a search but can't find it - can you do a link to it?

french, I'm sorry, in the past i saw a lot of tips for muffins as this thread keeps comming back. I'm sure it's a very common problem and not many people are blessed with being able to make wonderfully risen muffins but I couldn't find much as i was searching now. I hope some of previous posters will see your thread and come up with their secret tips

After doing the search I've found an easy recipy which I've just tried and my fussy DS1 likes the muffins. They didn't go soggy. I eded some little pieces of chocolate to the recipy www.mumsnet.com/Recipes?call=RecipePage&pid=1615

actually I find butter makes heavier muffins than oil (vegetable oil like sunflower and not like olive)

susan reimer is your best bet I think

don't overstir

and oven at 190 or 180 if fan

We swear by the Susan Reimer book too - I use oil not butter. Always turn out well.

What's your recipy, twiglet?

I just tried the MN recipe you linked to fedda - extraordinarily easy and best results I've had. I baked them at 150C for 30 min (not 140C for 15 min) tho! Next time I'll try them with plain yogurt and more fresh fruit, as I never have fruit yogurt in the fridge. But most importantly they got mixed quite a lot (DD2 was involved), but they still rose nicely, weren't remotely squidgy and didn't stick to the cases.

Hi there,

I've mislaid both copies of my Susan Reimer muffin book (the spiral bound, slightly slug-eaten one, and the newer blue edition) and was online searching for some recipes to give to my bf to make for Sport Relief fundraising at work this Thursday.

Which is how I got here ...

Something I've done before is use melted Olivio olive oil spread (now called Bertolli, I think) instead of butter or oil in the recipe, and I think it's made the muffins lighter.

The main recipes I was after was the cocoa and courgette one, the lemon one (with the icing) and the banana one (which I put shards of good milk chocolate into, the dark doesn't work as well, for a change).

Can anyone help at all? send me a PDF scan or something?

cheers,

J