Can You Make Muffin Tops Without Making The Whole Muffin?

There's no shame in skipping to your favorite part of something. Maybe you save the best part of a dish for last, like eating Lucky Charms cereal but saving the marshmallows until the end. On a related note, we all know the most delicious part of any muffin is its top. So, why not skip to what's good and make a muffin top without the superfluous bottom? Can it even be done? Yes, it can. 

All you need to make muffin tops without the full muffin bottom is a simple sheet pan and the usual suspects like flour, butter, and sugar or a premade muffin mix to save time. The reason muffin tops are the prized portion of a muffin is because they're usually the most flavorful part. What you want out of a muffin top is a crispy outer shell with a soft inside that has plenty of blueberries, chocolate chips, nuts, or whatever mix-ins you chose.

The initial steps of making muffin tops on their own is essentially the same as making a whole muffin. If baking from scratch, you'll want to mix the dry ingredients like flour, sugar, baking powder, and so on. No matter what muffin recipe you choose to follow, it's important to mix dry and wet ingredients separately at first to ensure ingredients are more evenly distributed in the batter. You should also allow the batter to rest before you do anything with it. The flour in the batter will hydrate more that way, ultimately leading to a thicker batter. Thicker batter will hold its shape more easily and is more likely to rise rather than spread out.

While muffin top pans do exist, you don't actually need one when you've mixed your batter up properly. You can just scoop the batter right onto a lined baking sheet in even portions. The muffin tops might resemble more of a cookie at first glance, but they are most definitely a muffin top. You don't even need a muffin tin to make muffin tops happen, either. Feel free to use that tin for other fun baking hacks, like using a muffin tin as a cooling rack for your other baked creations.