What To Consider Before Baking Your Brownies In A Muffin Tin

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There are so many secret ingredients you can add to your brownies to customize your flavor experience — but when it comes to texture, you typically have to rely on the structure of your baking dish. Those who love extra crispy edges with every bite often resort to baking brownies in muffin tins in order to achieve this consistent crunch. Preparing the baked good in a muffin tin can also save a little time — though you'll want to be careful about overbaking. Food Republic spoke to Adriano Zumbo, world renowned pâtissier, and he highlighted a few things you should take under consideration before switching from a regular pan or baking sheet to prepare brownies. "If you use a muffin tin[,] the bake times would be slightly less as there is less surface area per cavity and more heat transfer points per tray, as there are multiple cavities," he said.

To combat this, Zumbo suggested baking your brownies for five minutes less than your recipe calls for. "This allows you to check and adjust as needed, rather than open and freak out," the expert shared. He also advised baking at a 10 to 15% lower temperature than the recipe calls for: "The timing will need to be adjusted as it's a slower bake, but [there's] less risk and nearly a promise that those brownies will be moist and perfect." And to keep them from sticking to the pan? Be sure to add a spritz of oil spray inside the tin, as well as a baking paper disc on the bottom for extra protection.

Lowering the bake time and temperature per Adriano Zumbo's instructions will definitely help easy the likelihood of your brownies burning in your muffin tin. However, there is still no guarantee the batch will come out perfectly. "Baking brownies in any tin will always make them susceptible to getting over cooked edges or corners," Zumbo explained. "There is no magic tin or shape of tin to magically stop them overcooking."

Apparently, the only way to truly keep the edges from feeling the impact of a metal baking tin is "to use a silicone or wooden baking mould," per our expert. If you have a penchant for over-baking things, but still want your brownies in a muffin shape, consider making them in a silicone, nonstick muffin pan, like this one from CAKETIME. Zumbo elaborated that these are ideal because "[they] don't hold as much heat or shed a lot of heat on contact, giving you a slower bake and less chance of over heat transfer, as in metal and aluminium baking tins." 

However, if you actually like your brownies with a defined outer crust — there's a reason they sell "all edge" brownie pans like the one seen on Shark Tank  — and gooey insides, you can definitely opt for the metal muffin baking tins. No matter what pan you end up using, you should still keep Zumbo's time and temperature adjustments in mind. If your brownies are less done than you'd like, you can always put them in for a few minutes more; what you can't do is un-bake them.