Muffins! You say cupcakes, I say muffins!

Gosh, I would hate to lose my popularity with the junior cupcake crowd, but many years of catering kids’ parties and watching their delighted faces as their lick their fingers put my fears at rest. This Muffin recipe is going to be your best friend. Your children will love me!

As if that was not enough, my granddaughter Musia recently described to me a birthday party she went to and said to me “The only thing I didn’t like is I had to wipe off all those blue and green and red creams off the tops of the cupcakes. Bubbie, why do they need it?” Yes, why indeed?

I make muffins, and make them festive in countless ways!

The festive part is not expressed in extra sugar or fat, or added  colorings. To name just a few examples: I make mini muffins; I use multicolored muffin liners; I sprinkle them with miniature chocolate chips, grated coconut, grated apple, blueberries or chopped nuts; I stick cute flags and candles into them at display time. However, if you absolutely must, top the muffins (excuse me, the cupcakes) with icing or frosting or whatever, I trust you will find recipes for that everywhere. But I sincerely hope you don’t…..

As always, I am starting with the simplest preparations.

This is my master muffin recipe, complete with all variations. You will be amazed at all the possibilities, all equally easy, delicious and nutritious. Mix and match, and get different results each time. You will never ever eat a store-bought muffin again, let alone a muffin mix: I am not even going there! This recipe makes a dozen and a half medium muffins, in less than ten minutes’ preparation time.

All these muffin batters are mixed by hand, no need for a mixer.

My muffins are all gluten-free-friendly.

Just one useful piece of advice: When adapting these recipes to gluten-free, always make muffins out of them, not larger cakes because the smaller the gluten-free item, the more manageable, and the less room for flopping and crumbling.

Scroll down for all my muffins variations, including cake!