Muffin recipe for giant cupcake pan

January 2, 2022 5:03 AM

We borrowed a giant cupcake pan from the library. The recipe that comes with it and the recipes I found online are all for cupcakes (unsurprisingly) but I would prefer to make a muffin or zucchini bread type of recipe in there, to make it healthier. But recipes for “giant” muffins are actually recipes for “jumbo” muffins which are considerably smaller. Can anyone either point me to a recipe or comment on how a zucchini bread recipe would fare in a giant cupcake pan? Thanks!
posted by amy.g.dala to Food & Drink (4 answers total)

Any loaf cake/quickbread recipe should work just fine in a muffin tin of any size! I like to start checking them for doneness (using a toothpick) a little over halfway through the cooking time prescribed in the original (loaf pan) recipe, and keep checking every 5 minutes until they turn out to be done. With the giant cupcake pan they'll probably take a lot closer to the full loaf pan time than half, but there's no real harm in checking often.


ETA: "done" means "toothpick inserted into centre comes out dry, maybe with some crumbs sticking to it"
posted by cabbage raccoon at 5:26 AM on January 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think some_kind_of_toaster is imagining large muffins, but I assume what you actually have is a two-part cake mold shaped like a cupcake? Wilton has tips on how long to bake and what kind of cake mix to use in their giant cupcake pan - they recommend a dense cake (like pound cake) because I guess otherwise it can just fall apart. So maybe something more like a zucchini coffee cake rather than a muffin? Think structural!
posted by mskyle at 7:44 AM on January 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I can't offer you a specific recipe, but I would like to offer you a piece of advice.

What no one tells you about cake recipes is that the recipe is not magical. Even radical changes can work: if you use a Victoria sponge as a base, take away all the eggs and you get a bread, take away the fat and you have a fatless sponge, and so on. You can take a recipe you like and, off the cuff, probably halve any specific ingredient of the base four - eggs, fat, flour and sugar - and still get food that will rise; adding moisture is also fine up to a point. Zucchini bread is just another cake recipe with weird add-ins.

The one thing that will change with the pan size is time. Use the toothpick test above (or a skewer or, at a push, a fork) and a 180C/350F cooking temperature will probably work out for small cakes like you cook in a cupcake pan. I usually test when it starts to look browned and cakey and smells nice, probably around the 15 minute mark for smallish cupcakes, maybe a bit longer if it's a wet mix. (Bigger pans would take longer, so if you start with a loaf sized recipe they will tell you it'll be 45 minutes or more in the original pan size; but seriously, when the smell makes you hungry it's time to check.)

Even if this doesn't encourage you to wing it, hopefully it helps you judge recipes you find on the Internet and see if they might work.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 11:37 PM on January 2, 2022

Most of the zucchini and banana and pumpkin bread recipes I've seen (so, quick breads) work fine converted from loaf to muffin or back. Same recipe, just fill the tin the appropriate amount and then cook accordingly (whatever is good for the loaf should work fine for a cake mold, which I also assume is what you're describing, but if it's something midsize it'll be similar.) You'll have to adjust timing a bit and the result will have more or less crust depending on the pan, of course, but whatever timing difference you see going from cupcake to jumbo cupcake should also carry over for muffin to jumbo muffin.
posted by Lady Li at 7:18 AM on January 3, 2022