Food52 in 5
This Game-Changing Muffin Mix Is the Key to Better Breakfasts
You'll want to make a triple batch.
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In my head, I’m the type of person who makes warm breakfasts every morning and tucks muffins into my kids’ backpacks as they go off to school. In reality, we eat cold cereal for breakfast, and my kids take some rotation of Pirate’s Booty, bananas, and granola bars as their school snacks. And I’m mostly okay with that, except for one thing: I love to bake, and I’d love to do more of it.
My baking usually happens late at night, after dinner is cleaned up and the kids are in bed. In a tired state, I usually end up with flour all over my pajamas and a sink full of dirty dishes to contend with the next morning. It recently occurred to me that to bake more often (and at a reasonable hour!), I need to take more shortcuts, just like I’ve been doing for weeknight dinners.
So I created this Game-Changing Muffin Mix. It takes inspiration from my Game-Changing Pancake Mix, a jar of which I always have on hand for emergency dinners and easy weekend brunches. The mix also takes some cues from Stella Park’s Top-Shelf Muffin Mix in Bravetart. Now, in the amount of time it’d take to assemble the dry ingredients for just one batch of muffins (so, about five minutes), I can make enough mix for three batches (or ten!) and store it in the pantry for weeks.
I had three main things in mind when creating the recipe:
1. Flavor
To ensure super-flavorful, richly textured muffins, I used a combination of flours (all-purpose, whole-wheat, oat, and rye) and brown sugar in the mix. For the liquid ingredients, I turned to olive oil for its savory richness and sour cream for its tanginess.
2. Easy Assembly
To make assembly quick and easy (both the mix and the muffins themselves), I included weights in grams for all of the ingredients—even the olive oil—so you can skip measuring cups altogether. (Thanks to Kristen Miglore’s Genius Desserts for this game-changing way of writing recipes!)
3. Adaptability
And because of the gram weights, the recipe is endlessly adaptable. Don’t have rye flour? Double up on the whole-wheat flour. Have Greek yogurt on hand? Use it in place of the sour cream. Even better, the basic recipe lends itself so well to virtually any type of add-ins—from lemon-blueberry (my son’s favorite) to cinnamon–chocolate chunk (my daughter’s favorite) to orange, currant & poppy seed (my favorite).
In the last few months, the mix has lived up to its name. It’s made freshly baked muffins simple, attainable, and consistently delicious, even on busy weekdays. My family’s muffin consumption has happily skyrocketed as a result.
One of the first times I baked muffins using this mix, I made sure to tuck one into each of my kids’ backpacks. “Mommy, can you please bake muffins more often?!” They asked after coming home from school.
Knowing that I had a big batch of the mix on hand, I proudly answered: “Of course!”
Written by: EmilyC
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11 Comments
I appreciate the weights. Years ago I (quasi)experimented with dry ingredients. Here in the Richmond, VA area, it can make a HUGE difference on different days or different times of the year. I think the humidity might have something to do with it, but that's just a guess. Plus, different brands can vary ever so slightly in grinds, I think. I always prefer to have weights for baking, because volumes don't seem to produce results as consistently for me.
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