The Extra Step You Should Take To Achieve Bakery-Style Muffins

Tired of making muffins that barely have a dome top? Wonder how all those professional bakers seem to bake muffins with high, golden-brown domes every time? The key to (literally) elevating your muffins lies not in what you're doing, but instead in what you're not doing yet.

That's right, for bakery-style muffins with those perfect peaks, you'll need to add an extra step to help your muffins rise like never before. The step you aren't yet taking isn't too difficult, but with some extra time, it'll transform your muffins from flat to flawlessly fluffy. Once you start adding this step into your muffin-making process, you'll never again envy the way that bakers can make such lofty muffins. One step and a few short hours later, you'll have fresh muffins with a dome top high enough to raise your baking expectations forever. You'll become that muffin baker you were once inspired by, and what's better than that?

If nothing makes you happier than taking that first bite of a warm muffin and still having plenty of the smooth, soft dome top left for you to enjoy, look no further than your refrigerator. The step professional bakers use to make muffin dome tops reach the highest heights doesn't require any special equipment – all you'll need is your fridge and a few hours of your time.

After you make the muffin batter, let it sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour. To make the baking process even smoother, leave the batter in the fridge overnight. While it may seem a bit inconvenient to put your baking on hold, the results will be well worth your time. As the batter chills, it's priming to become those high-dome muffins that you usually only see in your favorite bakeries. During this time, the starch molecules in the flour absorb liquid in the batter, which makes the batter thicker. At the same time, refrigerating the muffin batter allows it to release air bubbles, which can also help it rise once it hits the oven.

Refrigerating muffin batter isn't the only way to get it to rise. By using other strategies, you can almost guarantee that you'll never bake a flat muffin again.

One of the most important things to remember is that the refrigeration technique is far less effective on boxed muffin mix, so if you want muffins with those distinctively high domes, make them from scratch. Fill those muffin cups until they're almost full, but since the amount of batter in the muffin cups doesn't fully dictate how loftily they'll rise, use a little bit of oven magic to increase the rise on your muffins. 

Bake your muffins for six to nine minutes at 425 degrees and then reduce the heat. The higher starting temperature will give your muffins some extra "lift" during the first few minutes of baking, and turning down the heat part of the way through will prevent them from burning. Just be sure to keep the oven door shut when you change the temperature. By refrigerating your muffin batter for several hours before baking, using a muffin recipe instead of a boxed mix, and turning up the oven for the first few minutes of baking, you'll have aspirational muffins that have reached new heights with their high domes and their flavor too.