Everyone loves muffin tops! They're the crunchy, best parts of the muffins. They're not crusty or sweaty like the bottoms sometimes are. Once you start making muffin tops, you'll never go back to standard muffins.
With a muffin top pan, you can make only the tops. A muffin top pan has indented cavities about 3/8-inch deep and 4-inches in diameter. You load these cavities with batter. With a stiff batter, you can make high domed tops and because these are jumbo-sized tops, six will equal a batch of a dozen regular muffins.
Product Testing in Our Test Kitchen
We have a test kitchen at our facility in Rigby, Idaho, where we test products and develop mixes and recipes. We tested the nonstick muffin top pan from Norpro using both recipes and mixes, experimenting to learn what works and what doesn't. Here are our findings along with a recipe that we enjoyed.
- You can create high-domes in muffin top pans as well as conventional pans. Many muffin recipes call for high heat at the beginning of the baking period to create the rise necessary for attractive domes. You can do the same with a muffin top pan but because they don't rise as far, it is not necessary. If your batter is stiff enough that you can mound it, you can create high domes.
- Muffin tops bake quicker than muffins because the batter is not as deep and because the batter is more exposed to the heat. We found that for most recipes and mixes, our muffin tops were baked in about 15 minutes at 375 degrees.
- With a thin batter, less can be put in a muffin top pan. The domes will not be as high and you'll have more muffin tops.
- A muffin top pan makes larger muffins, especially if you are making high-domed muffins. A standard muffin mix or recipe for twelve muffins makes six large, high-domed tops. With less dome, you can make flatter muffin tops equal to twelve standard muffins.
- Because you have shallow indentations on the pan, the muffins remove very easily. If they stick at all, let them sit for a couple minutes.
Banana Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffin Tops
Everyone likes chocolate muffins. We modified our Banana Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffin recipe to make these muffin tops. They are very good.
This is sweet enough; it's almost like a cake. In fact, you can serve it with whipped cream or ice cream and little fudge topping for a special treat.
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 brown sugar
2/3 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup ripe bananas, mashed (about two smaller bananas)
1 teaspoon banana flavor
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
1. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.
2. In another bowl, mash the bananas. Whisk two large eggs and add those to the bananas. Add the oil, milk, flavor, brown sugar, and sour cream. Blend well. Stir in the nuts and chocolate chips.
3. With a spatula, mix the dry ingredients into the liquid mixture. Stir until just combined. Spoon the batter into greased muffin top tins.
4. Bake for 15 minutes. Let the muffins sit in the tins for a few minutes and then remove them to wire racks to cool. Makes 8 to 10 muffin tops.