Brown Sugar Muffins

Why You’ll Love this Recipe

We love these brown sugar muffins any time of day. They go great with tea, coffee, or our carrot apple soup. They are perfect to make ahead for an easy grab and go breakfast or to serve at a brunch.

The recipe itself isn’t fussy and there is nothing complicated about it. They are easy to customize and turn into brown sugar cinnamon muffins or to add your favorite nuts (like walnuts or pecans), or chocolate chips to.

Ingredient Notes

• Butter. We used melted butter in this recipe. You can use salted or unsalted butter. Butter adds moisture, tenderness, and flavor.
• Brown Sugar. We use light brown sugar as our sweetener in these brown sugar muffins. The molasses in the brown sugar adds a rich, smokey flavor. You can use dark brown sugar for a more molasses-forward muffin.
• Egg. Use 1 large egg in this recipe to help bind the ingredients together.
• Milk. Milk is the liquid in this recipe, it adds moisture, you can also use buttermilk if you prefer.
• Vanilla. Vanilla adds a rich bakery flavor to these muffins.
• Flour. All-purpose, white flour, is used in this recipe.
• Baking Soda. Baking soda is the leavening agent that helps our brown sugar muffins rise, giving them a light texture.
• Salt. A little salt enhances the flavors. Use a fine salt.
• Optional Mix-ins. You can adds extra mix-ins to this recipe like walnuts or pecans (or other nuts), cinnamon, chocolate chips, chopped apples, dried fruit, or oats.

How to Make this Recipe

1. Mix sugar and liquid ingredients. Whisk together the melted butter, brown sugar, milk, and eggs until smooth.

2. Add dry ingredients. Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt. Whisk until smooth, do not over mix the batter.

3. Scoop. Heat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Line your muffin pan with muffin papers. Fill the muffin papers with batter ⅔ to all the way to top depending on how many muffins you want or how large you want them. This recipe makes about 12-16 muffins.
4. Bake. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the muffin gently springs back when pressed or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (a few moist crumbs are okay). Let cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan.

Recipe Variations

This recipe is very basic and simple and it is easy to add some extra mix-ins to or make a simple variations of it.

Some of our favorite additions to this brown sugar muffin recipe are finely chopped or grated apple, chopped nuts (like walnuts or pecans), chocolate chips, cinnamon chips, fresh blueberries, quick oats, dried fruit (like raisins or dried cranberries).

The amount of each mix-in we recommend varies  depending on the ingredients. For apple, dried fruit, or oats we recommend about a ½ cup. For blueberries, chocolate chips, or cinnamon chips, we recommend ½-1 cup. For chopped nuts we like about ¼ cup. Feel free experiment with more or less.

If you prefer a more molasses-forward brown sugar muffin you can replace the light brown sugar with dark brown sugar.

Make them Cinnamon Muffins

One of our favorite variations of these easy brown sugar muffins is to turn them into brown sugar cinnamon muffins!

To Make them Brown Sugar Cinnamon Muffins:

• Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon to the batter
• Melt two tablespoons of butter and brush the tops of muffins with it after they come out of the oven.
• Mix together 2 tablespoons white sugar and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and generously sprinkle over the butter brushed on top of the brown sugar cinnamon muffins.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Expert Tips

Measure Ingredients Properly

Measuring ingredients properly is essential to excellent baked goods. Too little brown sugar and the muffin won’t be as tender, sweet, and flavorful. Too much milk and your batter will be too wet. Too much flour and the muffins will be dry.

The most common culprit is not measuring flour properly. I typically like to weigh my flour (weight of ingredients has been included in the recipe card), however, I realize not everyone has a kitchen scale on hand. To make sure you have the right amount of flour, stir your flour up in its container—it compacts while it sits. Then, spoon and level the flour into the measuring cup, then use the back of a knife to level it off. If you need further guidance, please see our post on how to measure flour for more detail.

Don’t Over Mix

Once you have incorporated your flour and other dry ingredients, mix the batter just enough that there are no lumps and no pockets of flour. If you keep mixing beyond this point, you run the risk of overworking the batter and gluten may start to develop. Once gluten develops, you will lose the tender muffin texture and get a tough, rubbery muffin.

Don’t Rely Solely on a Timer

Every oven runs a little different and there are other factors like elevation, humidity, etc. that can affect your bake time. That is why you often see a time range on baked goods.

An over baked muffin will be dry. I like to set my timer for less time and check on the muffin to see if they are done. Remember, you can always add more time to the timer but you can’t take it away.

You’re looking for two things when checking to see if the muffins are fully baked:

1. A gentle spring back—gently press on the center of a muffin, it should not stay depressed and will gently spring back.
2. A clean toothpick—insert a clean toothpick into the center of a muffin. When removed, it should come out clean and not have any wet muffin batter on it, a few moist crumbs is okay.

Top the Muffins with Sugar

For a sweet, crunchy, caramelized sugar topping generously sprinkle some white, granulated sugar or coarse sugar on the scooped muffin batter before they go in the oven.

How to Store this Recipe

Room Temperature. Once completely cool, store these muffins in an airtight container. They are best eaten within 3 days.

Freezer. These muffins freeze beautifully. Cool them completely and place in an airtight container or a gallon freezer bag. If placing in a bag, try to remove as much air as possible to prevent freezer burn. They are best eaten within 3 months of freezing. Let thaw on the counter before eating.

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