How To Stop Berries From Bursting In Your Muffins
So you spent a ton of time finding the perfect blueberry muffin recipe. You made sure you have all the ingredients, and you started baking. The muffins look delicious, and you can't wait for them to finish cooking so you can take a big bite out of one. Soon the timer goes off, you pull those fluffy, fruity treats out of the oven, and much to your disappointment, the blueberries have all sunken down to the bottom of the muffin cup, leaving a mess and not delivering the full experience of the fresh, homemade blueberry muffins you were hoping for. Does this sound familiar?
There's a simple explanation as to why this happens more often than you'd like. According to Baking Kneads, it's all about gravity. Blueberries are naturally heavier than the batter itself, so when adding them to the mix, they will naturally fall down to the bottom. Since the goal is to make blueberry muffins where the delicious fruit is scattered nicely around the entire muffin, we've got a hack for you that will solve the problem.
Hold off on mixing the blueberries
Baker Tessa Arias discovered a way to make sure those precious fruits don't sink to the bottom when making muffins, and she learned it from "BraveTart" author Stella Parks. Instead of adding the blueberries to the batter and then pouring it into muffin cups, hold off on adding it and start filling the muffin tray with a layer of batter first. This creates a thin layer on the bottom of the cups, creating a barrier for the blueberries to naturally sink down to the bottom and stick. Then add the blueberries to the remaining batter and bake as normal. Ta da! Crisis averted.
We love that this trick works with lined and unlined muffin cups, and can work for cupcakes and blueberry bread as well. Almost all muffin recipes can be adapted into a loaf, which also freezes beautifully, making it a great food gift.
There are a number of different methods that bakers have successfully used to prevent those blueberries from sinking to the bottom. Blueberries, a site dedicated to baking with the delicious fruit, suggests coating them with a bit of flour before adding them to the remaining batter for extra assurance. The flour helps to absorb some of the moisture from the blueberries, helping them disperse a bit easier when baking. Try both of these methods and see which one works out the best. Happy baking!