Claim Your Muffins Back from the Tin!
Melissa Tracey was a rockstar in our test kitchen. She graduated from two culinary programs, one in New York and one in Idaho. She knew how to bake. Alas, she’s teaching in Arizona now.
“She said the most valuable tool we had in our test kitchen was this long, thin blue (it comes in red also) silicone spatula. It’s long enough, thin enough, and soft enough that you can run it around the sides of a muffin and under the bottom and gently lift it out.
“As long as you get the muffins out within a few minutes after coming out of the oven–don’t let the sugar cool and set up–it’s the slickest way to get muffins from the pan.
“If you would rather have one of these silicone spatulas instead of the muffin mix, click here and use “ZSPAT” at checkout.”–Dennis Weaver
How to Remove Muffins from the Tin
Preparing Your Muffin Tins for Easy Removal
1. Use a good quality muffin tin, preferably one with a nonstick finish. Old, worn, tins don’t release as easily. Check out our non-stick muffin tin. Good quality tins, especially nonstick ones, allow the muffins to slide right out without them catching on any of the uneven or flaking surfaces that you’d get from an older pan.
2. Grease the surfaces well, especially in the corners. Be sure to grease the flat surfaces around the edges of the muffin tin where the muffin cap may cling. This will ensure that none of the batter can cling to the muffin tin while baking.
What works better, vegetable oil or shortening for greasing the tins? We’ve tried both and both work well. With a spray canister, it’s easier to get the vegetable oil into the corners but shortening seems to work just as well as long as we generously grease the corners.
Removing Muffins from the Tin
1. Let the muffins cool in the tins for only two or three minutes before removing them. Longer than that and the melted sugar will set up like concrete and you will have to chisel the muffins out.
2. Use a Thin-Bladed, Soft Silicone Spatula and run it around the edges of the muffins and under the bottom and lift the muffins from each cavity and lift them out one at a time. The thin-bladed spatula trick is easy. You can use paper liners, but your muffins won’t rise as high. The spatula will pay for itself in the extra peanut butter and mayonnaise that you dig out of the bottom of the bottles.
