You Must Add a Pudding Cup to Your Muffin Mix.
Not all recipe trials turn out the way you’d expect. Sometimes you want a cake, but instead you get a new type of cupcake. While I could cheer you up on a few surefire ways to not turn pudding cups into cakes, I thought a small cupcake maker might be more helpful. For a classic breakfast texture, add a cup of pudding to your muffin mix.
Pudding is not suitable for a fluffy cake base because of its density – the dessert becomes heavy and viscous. However, it can be a useful addition to any muffin mix. While cakes are advertised as being light with fine crumbs, while cupcakes are chunky, hefty and irregular. Cakes usually get extra sweetness from icing or other sugary toppings, while muffins contain gifts such as blueberries, nuts, or chocolate chips. After a few of my sticky trials, I found that adding pudding to muffin batter actually increases the positive qualities of muffins.
I used a regular Jell-O vanilla pudding cup and it gave my cupcakes a subtle but noticeable bounce inward. The starchy thickness of the pudding added a bit of appeal without making the dough sticky or heavy. This extra structure is ideal if you are making large muffins with fruit or other accessories. Where other types of cake batter can cause fruit to fall to the bottom or burn the edges and underdone the middle, adding pudding can provide the support you need without weighing it down. Sometimes the quickbreads can get a bit dry and crumbly, especially after a day, but they had muted hydration that remained even after I left them open overnight (forgetting them was part of my scientific process, leave me alone) .
The most unexpected result was the taste. I didn’t add any extracts and was expecting something a bit bland, but the Jell-O vanilla flavor gave my batch of cupcakes a taste almost like creme brulee. This opens the door to a plethora of cupcake options like chocolate, toffee, and Oreo. Is Oreo pudding flavored? (That is how it should be.)
How to Add Pudding to Muffin Mix
Use store-bought or homemade pudding to add extra moisture and pep to your muffin mix. A standard Jell-O pudding cup weighs just under four ounces each, and the muffin recipe I modified makes nine small cupcakes. I used a Wilton cake pan with standard foil liners, but you can butter and flour the holes if you prefer cupcakes without liners. Choose any muffin recipe you would like to work with. There’s only one adjustment you really need to make, and that’s a little weird – just stick with me here.
Cut liquid measurement (not oil measurement) in half + 2 tablespoons. So if ½ cup milk is needed, add ¼ cup and then two more tablespoons of milk. Add other liquid ingredients such as butter and eggs according to the recipe to the same bowl. Whisk the wet ingredients together until smooth, and then beat the pudding into the wet mixture as well. Since one pudding cup weighs just under four ounces and is perfect for nine small cakes, check the recipe yield and adjust. At the end, I usually add a healthy pinch of sugar to the top of each muffin, no matter what the recipe says – it creates deliciously crunchy rafts on top of the muffins.
This calculation gives the best springy texture to the cake without weighing it down. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t add any extracts, but the pudding added a lot of flavor. From here you can get creative. Use vanilla pudding and make creme brulee streusel cupcakes or try chocolate chip toffees. Let me know in the comments how your pudding cup combinations turn out.