Fluffy Gluten Free Strawberry Muffins Recipe | Fearless Dining (2024)

FAQs

Which gluten free flour is best for muffins? ›

Brown rice flour contains one single ingredient—brown rice. And while all brown rice flours are naturally gluten free, it's essential to check that the one you're using was made in a gluten free facility. In recipes, brown rice flour works best in bread, muffins and cookies.

If you're hoping to create extra moist muffins or aren't going to eat them for a while, consider using paper liners instead. Paper liners will help keep the moisture inside of the baked goods, allowing the muffins to remain fresher for longer.

Chilling your muffin batter overnight in the fridge is the BEST thing you can do for amazing muffins. It makes them more moist, tender, and TALLER! It's very similar to chilling cookie dough, which if you know me you know I'm obsessed with chilling cookie dough. Think of it like marinating.

You can use either all-purpose flour or pastry flour; all-purpose flour gives you a sturdier muffin while a pastry flour muffin will be lighter and more delicate. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, vanilla, vegetable oil or butter, and eggs. Make sure to blend them thoroughly!

Gluten-free muffins won't rise if you have not used enough leavening agents, if you don't use eggs or if the batter is over mixed.

2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of gluten-free flour is necessary to ensure proper leavening. Baking soda and buttermilk can be used to leaven instead of baking powder, but 1-1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar should be added for each 1/2 teaspoon baking soda used.

Not enough leavening agent. This can happen with unsifted flour (sifting also helps incorporate air), using the wrong type of flour (especially if the recipe calls for self-raising), or using old or improperly-stored flour or baking soda/powder.

Over-mixing – If you mix the muffin batter too much it can create a VERY dense muffin with huge pockets of air inside.

The best bakery-style crumb muffins start with cake flour

Cake flour is more finely ground and has less protein, which leaves the muffins with a fine, light crumb and soft texture. Using cake flour is an easy way to avoid heavy, dense muffins even if you end up stirring just a bit too much.

Are muffins better with oil or butter? ›

Structure - although oil makes baked goods very moist and longer lasting than butter, for high rising baked goods that need more structure, like muffins, butter is a better choice. Butter is wonderful for incorporating air into baked goods.

Quickbreads and muffins are hydrating batters, which means the flour absorbs the liquid over time, resulting in a very moist muffin, and improving the flavor. So let your muffin batter rest, up to 24 hours if possible.

If there isn't enough egg, your batter or dough may not be able to hold its structure or could end up overly dry or dense. On the other hand, if there is too much egg, your baked goods could lose their shape due to excess liquid, or have a rubbery (or even overly cakey) texture depending on the recipe.

To achieve that at home, you'll need to have cake flour on hand. You can use cake flour in place of all purpose flour in any muffin recipe; just add an extra two tablespoons of cake flour per cup of AP flour that the recipe calls for.

Because of baking soda's bitter taste, it must be paired with a sweeter tasting acidic compound. Baking soda is most commonly used in cookie and muffin recipes. Baking powder, however, already contains an acid and a base and has a more neutral taste, which works great when baking cakes and bread.

When to Swap All-in-One Gluten-Free Flours for Regular Flour. These gluten-free flour blends substitute well in batters that use baking powder and/or baking soda to leaven—such as cookies, muffins, and cakes—along with batters that are wetter in texture, like pancakes and quick breads.

Gluten's elasticity allows batters and doughs to trap air released by leavening agents (yeast, baking powder, or baking soda), which is how they're able to rise. Without this protein, gluten-free baked goods have the potential to be grainy, dense, and crumbly, but they don't have to be!

Xanthan gum (along with other thickeners like guar gum and arrowroot) acts like a binder in gluten-free baked goods to maintain their structure. Without it, there's a good chance that your brownies or muffin will crumble and fall apart.

If you want to buy just one gluten-free flour, we highly recommend the Pillsbury all-purpose gluten-free flour. Not only is it our favorite gluten-free flour, and easy to use in gluten-free recipes, but it's also one of the few gluten-free flours currently on the market that is recommended for baking with yeast.