Standard Muffin Recipe – A plain muffin batter is added to a muffin tin, then you can add your favorite flavors (fruit, nuts, chocolate, etc.) to each muffin. Great for kids and guests because everyone gets to choose the type of muffin they want.
About a year ago, I noticed several recipes trending on Pinterest involving pancake batter and muffin tins. Some people called them puffins, some people called them individual baked pancakes. The general idea was to take pancake batter and pour it into a muffin tin, then top the batter with your favorite flavors (fruits, nuts, chocolate chips, oats, etc.) and bake it. I thought it was a great idea, so I tried it. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like it. The thing about pancake batter is, it’s not very good on its own. That’s probably why most people douse their pancakes in lots of maple syrup. Even when I added syrup to the baked pancakes, or whatever you want to call them, they still weren’t my favorite.
But, I still really liked the idea of being able to use a bunch of different flavors/toppings to add to one standard batter. The batter just needed to taste better. So why not use the muffin tin for it’s actual purpose, making muffins! Muffin batter is lighter and sweeter; and you can still add all of your favorite additional ingredients to it.
This is great for house guests, kids, and picky eaters because everyone can choose their favorite flavor of muffin to make. It’s also a great way to get creative in the kitchen. I tried a lot of different flavor combinations and some of the ones that sounded a little strange ended up being great, like dried cranberry and sweetened coconut.
All you do is follow the standard muffin recipe below, fill a muffin tin with the batter, and top with your favorite muffin flavors/additions. Use a toothpick to push the additional ingredients down into the batter and swirl them around a bit. This way the additional ingredients are spread throughout the muffin and don’t just sit on top of it, as you can see in the blueberry muffin pictured on the right. Then, just bake and cool the muffins like any other muffin recipe. 
The amount of additional ingredients you add is up to you, if you like lots of chocolate chips in your muffins, then add lots of chocolate chips. I ended up using about a tablespoon of each additional ingredient.
I experimented with lots of different flavor additions for this standard muffin recipe. Here are a few that I tried: blueberry (pictured on the right), banana nut, chocolate chip, dried cranberry & sweetened coconut, mango & sweetened coconut, Peanut butter & jelly, and brown sugar & oats.
This brown sugar and oats muffin was another one of my favorites. The brown sugar addition really sweetened it up.
I do have a suggestion for your flavor additions. If you are adding an ingredient that is not very sweet, like blueberries, you may want to roll that ingredient around in a little sugar before you add it to the batter.
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Standard Muffin Recipe
Video
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp. baking powder
- ½ tsp. salt
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup skim milk, or your preferred milk/milk alternative
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- ¼ cup canola or vegetable oil
- cooking spray
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place muffin liners in a muffin tin and spray with cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir to combine.
- In another bowl, add the sugar, milk, vanilla, egg, and oil. Whisk to combine.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined; batter should be lumpy. Do not over mix.
- Fill the muffin liners ¾ of the way up.
- Add your favorite muffin flavors/additions (fruit, nuts, chocolate chips, oats, etc.). Take a toothpick and push the additional ingredients down into the batter and swirl them around a little.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Wonderful
Great basic recipe! I substituted King Arthur Measure for Measure gf flour and rice milk. They came out fantastic!! I used strawberries. Can’t wait to try other variations!
It’s amazing, I’ve done it like millions of times and everyone loves it!
Love this recipe! It’s so nice to be able to to customize muffins for everyone and the recipe is simple enough that my toddler loves to help with it (she loves anything that allowed her to use a whisk)!
The muffins are great! When i first took a bite, the top lauer was crispy and thin. The inner muffin was soft. Any ways for me to post pics of the muffins on this page?
There are 4 teenage boys and 3 adults in this household. Sorry to say I only made one batch to try them out. Triple batch from now on. If I had 2 ovens, they’d both be full of muffins. Everyone gave a big thumbs up.
Thank you!
Made these tonight! Super delicious! Thank you so much for this recipe!!!
I’m going to be honest and say I did not care for these. I followed the recipe to the exact amounts and found the texture not muffin-like at all. Very disappointed as I put so much faith in the reviews and made them for my New Year’s Day brunch and will toss them instead.
Simple and delicious!
These came out grea! I used coconut oil because I didn’t have anything else, and I didn’t get it to melt all the way so I was worried. But they came out perfectly! I baked them for 19 minuets and then let them sit in the pan for 5 and then removed them and they’re just how I like it,
There’s a slight golden crust but over all pretty pale, that’s how I like mine. Even though a minute wouldn’t make an insane difference 🙂
Amazing recipe, easy and fast to make, delicious, fool proof, and my family loved it too! 🙂 This was my first time making muffins, and I am glad I found this recipe.
This recipe shows me “13 muffins” worth of ingredients by default, and when I combined the mentioned ingredients, that resulted in 12, not 13. (I converted everything to metric because I’m not USA based 🙂 )
I’ll be making muffins again and again. Next time, I’ll double the load and try more flavours ^^ Thank you so very much for sharing this recipe!
Great recipe! Super easy to follow and every flavor turned out amazing.
I am going to use this recipe for my science experiment! I am so glad I found a good one. In my experiment I have to use the same amount of different types of flour and test which flour causes the highest muffin density. Since, I only need one muffin with each type of flour, I can make the rest for my friends and family!!
PS- I am 14
Easy and perfect 👌🏼
Hi
Can I use one cup of quick oat meal and one cup all purpose flour?
Can I mix the dry ingredients and keep it in a jar?
Made these this morning, added blueberries to half the batter and bananas to other half. They came out so moist and not overly sweet. Great recipe!
I accidentally added a whole cup of milk to my BettyCrocker blueberry muffins (only require 1/2 cup) and didn’t know what to do. In desperation I halved the dry parts of your recipe and mixed it into the same bowl as my watery concoction, I threw in the whole tsp of vanilla and they turned out great. I filled the muffin cups up to a 1/4 inch from the brim and they had beautiful tops. I buttered the tops fresh out of the oven and sprinkled them lightly with sugar. These muffins were amazing, thanks for saving our breakfast.
you only need to cook them for 12-14 min
This is now my go to muffin recipe ! I doubled it, used canned condensed milk, and got 24 muffins; I made four different flavors, blueberry, dried cranberry with grated lemon rind, mini chocolate chip and confetti with multi colored sprinkles. This recipe is so versatile and I love that they are not too sweet!
amazing muffins I cooked them for 17 min and added approximately 1/2 cup fresh mashed raspberries ,approximatley 1/2 cup frozen mixed berriesapproximatley 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds and 1/8 cup crushed coconut chips AND 1/4 cup water
they were gone in minutes