Muffins are considered peak comfort food for a good reason. Whether you’re making a big batch to share with family, or a smaller batch just to enjoy at home, muffins always deliver. Of course, it helps if you know a few muffin-baking tips and rules as well.
However, there’s one myth surrounding muffins that needs to be put to rest. Many cooks have the belief — often passed down from previous generations of bakers — that a muffin pan should absolutely never be put into the oven if there are empty cups. Instead, should your mixture not quite make enough batter to fill the 12 or six muffin wells, you should put a little water into each of the empty cups.
This addition of water was supposed to benefit your muffins in multiple ways. First, it was supposed to help to distribute the heat evenly throughout the oven, baking your muffins better. Second, adding some extra moisture into the baking environment can make your muffins moister and prevent the mixture from spilling over the rims. Finally, this bit of water should also stop the muffin pan from warping.
While there may be some sense to this line of thinking, there is ultimately no scientific evidence that adding water to empty muffin cups improves the end result of your baking.
Let the science talk
Having extra moisture in the oven could have the opposite effect on your muffins. Recipes are created with ingredients that are measured in specific proportion to each other. This is because certain amounts of ingredients are needed in relation to each other for the correct chemical reaction to happen to deliver the desired result. Adding in more moisture that isn’t called for by the recipe increases the amount of liquid in the oven, and could result in your muffins not cooking through, or having a more chewy, dense texture. In fact, even additional humidity in the air can affect your batter while you’re baking.
As for the pan warping, that could happen anyway, because warping is caused by the larger metal surfaces heating up more slowly than the smaller ones, which creates stress where the areas meet and that telltale pop when a little warping happens. To lower the chance that your pan will warp, rather leave a cup empty between each filled one, so you have an even spread of filled and empty cups. This helps with heat distribution and tackles that warping.
After that, it’s best to follow the general golden rules of muffin baking. Don’t overmix the batter, only fill each cup to about two-thirds of the way full, and place your tin in the center of the oven for good heat distribution. If you keep these rules in mind, you should be able to make the very best batch of Cardamom Blueberry Muffins imaginable.
