Does your favorite batch of muffins look oh-so-inviting straight out of the oven? With a golden, domed top wafting sweet fragrance your way – only to disappoint when a sad, soggy bottom is revealed?
Well, cheer up muffin lovers! We have the fix(es) here.
Overly moist bottoms are usually due to a just few basic mistakes, and they’re easy to solve. Let’s avoid any future disappointments by taking a closer look at those errors and their solutions.
Sunken Add-Ins
For quick, single-serving breakfast breads that are made with bulky ingredients like blueberries, chocolate chips, dried fruit, nuts, and so on, an overly moist or undercooked bottom can happen when those add-ins sink.
When this happens, the top has only the occasional bit of these additional ingredients, while the bottom is packed with them. This can mean a lot of extra moisture in the form of fruit juice, melted chocolate, or evaporating steam that stews the batter instead of baking it – leaving a pudding-like consistency rather than a firm crumb.
The remedy for sunken add-ins is to lightly coat them with flour, using whatever type your recipe calls for. Just a couple of tablespoons will do, making sure to coat all pieces evenly.
Of course, timing is also important with this step.
Ensure that your oven is preheated, the tins are prepped and ready to go, and that the batter is mixed. As the very last step before pouring the batter into the tins, fold in the flour-coated berries or other add-ins.
The dry flour coating provides resistance in the moist batter, suspending nuts, chocolate, and other goodies in place until the batter firms and the crumb has set. It will also absorb some of the fruit juice or oil that’s released in baking. This results in evenly distributed add-ins throughout, with batter that is firmly set.
This flour-coating trick is good for any quick bread recipes, including cupcakes, scones, and biscuits.
Steamed To Sogginess
With recipes that don’t have heavy or juicy add-ins, soggy bottoms are often caused by leaving muffins to cool in their pans for too long. This is problematic, as it traps steam.
When baked goods come out of the oven they’re naturally very hot, and internal steam needs to escape while they cool. If left sitting in tins, the released steam immediately hits the pan walls and condenses. And with nowhere else to go, the moisture is absorbed back into the crumb.
This is a very simple fix – don’t let your muffins rest in the tins for longer than 5 minutes.
When they’re cool enough to handle, remove from the pan and transfer to a cooling rack. The steam will escape freely, and your bottoms will be firm and moist without any sogginess.
Stop Guessing And Use The Right Tools!
The final cause of undercooked or wet bottoms is often due to the use of guesswork, or using incorrect tools to measure ingredients.
Eyeballing amounts and adjusting ingredients by taste may be acceptable in many types of cooking, but baking is all about chemistry – and exact quantities are required in order to achieve the desired results.
Naturally, to get an exact measurement every time, you need the right tools for the job.
Though handfuls, pinches, and other inexact measurements are sometimes used in baking, today’s cookbooks and recipes found online are usually more exact, based on standardized measurements of volume (and often weight as well).
To be more specific, this means you need to use proper measuring spoons and cups, not dessert or soup spoons and a coffee mug. Level off dry ingredients with a straight edge for precision, like the spine of a chef’s knife.
For larger quantities of liquids, ingredients should go into liquid measuring cups, not the same ones that are used for dry measures. Whereas dry measuring cups are loaded to the rim, if you try to fill your liquids this much, some will inevitably spill out – throwing off the baking formula if it winds up in the mixing bowl, or creating waste and a mess if it splashes onto the counter or floor.
Since most of us don’t have liquid measures for anything below 1/4 cup, you do need to make sure liquids reach the edge of the spoon, not a bit below or with excess dribbling into the bowl.
For flour and other dry ingredients, the most accurate way to measure is by weight on a proper kitchen scale. Using a dry measure for flour instead can be iffy at best – the density of packing can vary greatly between manufacturers, and it depends largely on the baker’s technique as well.
Since different batches of flour can give completely different amounts in the same measuring cup, and an individual’s measure can vary from cup to cup even with the same batch, this can result in significant variances from what the recipe calls for.
Failing to use the precise amounts called for in the recipe can result in muffin chaos, including under-cooked bottoms. Let the chemistry work for you by employing the correct tools to measure, and you’ll be enjoying lovely set bottoms with the next batch!
Firm Bottoms Forever
As we mentioned at the start, there are several potential causes of soggy bottoms, but the solution’s simple.
A few minor adjustments like flour-coating berries and other types of fruit and weightier add-ins, removing the baked goods from their tins to cool, and using the correct measuring tools can turn your bottoms into firm, delectable foundations – so you can enjoy the entire muffin, not just the top!
Well, now that you have a new skill set, why don’t you try it out on this recipe for morning muffins? Delicious!
You can also make our recipe for paleo carrot cake cupcakes! Though almond flour won’t work as well for coating heavier ingredients, stick with all of our other techniques.
Have some tips of your own to share for awesome-textured muffins? Drop us a note in the comments below – your insights are always welcome!
Blueberry photos by Lorna Kring, © Ask the Experts, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. See our TOS for more details. Uncredited photos: Shutterstock.
About Lorna Kring
Recently retired as a costume specialist in the TV and film industry, Lorna now enjoys blogging on contemporary lifestyle themes. A bit daft about the garden, she’s particularly obsessed with organic tomatoes and herbs, and delights in breaking bread with family and friends.
This is great! We use a turkey oven when we cook since my actual oven went out on us. I notice when we make muffins or cupcakes, we have this issue! Ill be trying this. Hope it works! Thanks
I hope it does too Ashley!
I’ve always had the problem with my fresh berry muffins, and I never thought about coating them with flour first. What an easy solution! I’d tried using dried berries, but those never came out tasting quite as good. I might have missed this in the article, but do paper muffin or cupcake papers make a difference? I’ve never had any on hand when I’ve wanted to make muffins, and so have never tried it. Also, when coating muffin trays to keep the muffins from sticking, how much should I use so the bottoms don’t get too much oil on them?
Paper liners shouldn’t make a difference if they’re cooled outside of the pans HK. As for oiling the pans, use just enough so the surface is coated, but without any pooling. Hope this helps!
At first glance, I thought of the muffin top episode of Seinfeld, ha ha. Jokes aside, these are some truly handy tips. I learn something new every time I visit this site.
I never would have thought of coating the berries first, but I’m totally stealing that idea. It makes sense. I will definitely use that tip the next time I make some.
I will pop them out and put them on the rack quicker too.
Any tips on freezing them? I’ve had pretty good luck so far, but I’m always open to learning new tips.
I occasionally freeze baked muffins and how I do it is baking and cooling them and then placing them in freezer bags. Try to remove as much air as you can from the bag before putting it away. I’m sure you could do the same thing if you wanted to preserve batter, only do it in a tray.
Thanks. Yeah, I meant the baked muffins. I don’t think I’d chance it by freezing the batter.
You definitely have to make sure they are thoroughly cooled first. That’s generally not a problem. Everyone eats some while their warm. If I make too many though, I want to freeze the rest for later.
I will do them individually from now on. Great idea. Easier to pop one out when you want it that way too.
Haha, there was a lot of good food gags on Seinfeld! For freezing, I just pop half a dozen into a zip-top bag and squeeze out any excess air – they’ll last up to three months or so (if my son doesn’t spot them first!).
I’ve had a few soggy bottoms in my time and I have learned the hard way. Before I was too adventurous with fillings and they sank, I didn’t line the baking trays enough, and the worst culprit was not preheating the oven enough.
There are no short cuts in baking and also don’t be tempted to peek or open the oven early if you can’t see inside. I’ve ended up with a few sad looking cakes because of that.
All good points Bella, thanks for sharing – baking does require more patience than other cooking modes!
I’ve never had this happen to my muffins, aside from one instance where I tried to bake jam-filled ones. It sounded like a great idea until they came out of the oven and I realized the flaw in the recipe. The flour trick probably won’t work for jam so I don’t think I’ll be making those muffins again!
I’m not much of a baker, anyway, since I thought using the weight of ingredients over measuring cups was a silly choice. Thanks for the article! I might try to redo the jam recipe this way, somehow.
For jam recipes, try filling the tins two thirds with batter then add a dollop of jam on top before baking in a fairly hot oven – about 400°F.
Call me crazy but I actually like the bottoms to be a little bit soggy. I am pretty sure that I can think of sometimes when they might be a little too soggy, though, so I can see the point here, and it is nice to know that there is a relatively easy little fix out there.
You’re the outlier rz, thanks for sharing!
If coating berries or choc chips in flour, is that additional flour to what is used in the recipe or do you keep a bit of the measured flour aside for the coating?
I find that measuring can be more complex because of different measurement bases – for instance in Australia a Tablespoon is 20 ml but I know many places use 15ml Tablespoons, and that can be a significant change in proportions that not everyone looks for.
Thanks for the tips, though – could save some future muffins for me!
I’m sure it needs to be additional flour. The measured flour has to be used up in making the muffin batter.
As Wheezybz says LSA, a bit of extra flour to coat the berries, not from the recipe.
How do we fix it if the muffins are already soggy?
If you notice this right away when you take them out of the pans, you can put them back in the pan and bake for 5-10 more minutes. Muffins that have already cooled can be put in the oven or toaster oven to firm up. But ideally, follow your instructions closely, monitor your oven’s temperature, and check with a tester before removing from the oven for better results with the next batch!
Muffins came out uncooked, i put them back in again straight away, came out uncooked again 🙁 i used too much grated carrot in my applesauce n carrot muffins, any heck to save them ?
First, have you checked with a thermometer to make sure your oven is up to temp? Overfilled muffin cups are a common culprit that will lead to longer bake times, as will baking at a lower temperature than what’s called for.
If you try the recipe again, be sure to only fill the cups by about 2/3, and increase the bake time in 5-minute increments beyond what’s called for in the recipe to account for the extra moist ingredients. Check periodically and keep baking until they’re cooked. There isn’t really a way to save muffins that haven’t cooked all the way through once you’ve let them cool – I’m afraid you’ll have to toss those.
If they start to brown too quickly on the outside but they’re still raw inside, you can cover the tops with foil. Check with a cake tester or a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin in the center of the pan for doneness- a moist carrot cake-style muffin is done when the tester comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it.
Since both carrots and applesauce contain a lot of moisture, but the liquid contents can vary when you’re working with produce, squeezing the excess liquid out of your grated carrots in a kitchen towel or paper towels and then tossing with flour before adding to the batter can also help.
Wishing you the best of luck if you try your recipe again! Applesauce and carrot sounds like a delicious combination.
Can I use almond or coconut flour to coat ? I’m on the Keto diet.
Absolutely, give it a try! They won’t be quite as absorbent as more starchy types of flour, but this should work. Let us know how it goes!