Any Muffins Recipe

Tornado Ali's Note:

This basic muffin recipe can make hundreds of different types of muffins,just by adding your choice of additions! Easy to memorize, you too can be called "The Muffin Queen" by your friends like I am! Comes from "The Tightwad Gazette."

• Total Time: 35 mins
• Prep Time: 15 mins
• Cook Time: 20 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 12

• 1 ½ cups flour
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk (or other liquid, such as drained pineapple juice, orange juice, etc...)
• ¼ cup oil or ¼ cup oil substitute
• 1 egg
• 1 ½ cups fruit , additions (or vegetable, such as 1 cup mashed banana and 1/2 cup chopped walnuts)
• spices , of your choice

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 400.
2. Grease 12 muffin cups, or 24 mini muffin cups.
3. Combine dry ingredients, including dry additions (like nuts, chocolate chips, etc -- ) and spices.
4. Combine wet ingredients, including wet additions (like banana, berries, pineapple, etc -- ).
5. Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling about 2/3 full (perfectly ok if you have leftover batter to fill cups to top.).
6. Bake for 18-20 minutes.
7. NOTES:.
8. To make non-sweet muffins, such as bacon and cheddar, just cut back on the sugar to 1 tablespoon. You can make your own "jiffy" corn muffins by substituting 1/2 cup corn meal for 1/2 cup of the flour, and using 2 tablespoons of sugar. Substitute peanut butter for the oil to give your muffins a peanutty taste (I make Elvis Muffins by using 2 mashed bananas, 1/2 cup chopped peanuts and then peanut butter for the oil.).
9. If your additions are very wet (such as crushed pineapple) then use up to 1/2 cup more flour, to equal up to 2 cups total flour.
10. Play around with this! It's easy and quick!

Reviews

[nethope]

You can probably go wrong as easily as right with this recipe, depending on what combination you pick. My favorite variant is the peanut butter-banana muffin, and here's what I used last time [warning! adaptations ahead!]: 1 cup cake flour 1 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 1 cup mashed banana 1/3 cup honey 1/3 cup peanut butter 2 Tbs canola oil 1 tsp vanilla extract Cake flour makes a lighter muffin, but I've also made hearty muffins with 1 part white wheat flour to 2 parts all-purpose flour. It's easy, it's adaptable, and that's just what I love in my recipes!

[Adam Wick]

My friend Sara and I made these with blueberries that we picked ourselves yesterday, and Sara's mom said that they were the best blueberry muffins that she'd ever had in her life! We added an extra egg and about 3/8 of a cup of whole wheat flour to give the muffins more substance (as per *my* mother's instructions). Thanks for the great recipe, Ali!

[Queen of Harts]

I made mine with frozen blueberries. They started to melt as I mixed, so my muffins turned a weird blue color! They came out tasting a little flour-y, a bit heavy. I'm going to try again, but will reduce the flour and see what I come out with.