I ❤️ muffins, but my muffin pans were getting on my last nerve. They scratched very easily and – worse yet – the last batch of muffins stuck so badly that I tore several trying to get them out. They stuck despite the pans being non-stick (which I don’t care for, anyway) and heavily greased with coconut oil. It was like an oil slick in those muffin cups – nothing should have stuck. And to make matters worse, the pans had become nearly impossible to get completely clean. #$&*!! A new muffin pan was needed.
The pan I ultimately decided to buy is called a “mini cake pan” by Lodge, rather than the “muffin pans” the company also sells. Why? Because the muffin pans aren’t standard sized, and I didn’t want mini muffins. The mini cake pan is more of a biscuit pan, but has larger baking cavities than the muffin pan.
This is a pre-seasoned pan; right out of the box, the seasoning looked even and dark. I’ve found that very few “pre-seasoned” (foundry seasoned) pans don’t benefit from being re-seasoned almost immediately, but I wanted to bake a batch of muffins in the pan to see how the seasoning performed before making any alterations.
Deciding which muffins to make was easy: I just looked in the fridge and based the choice on what I had available. I spied a jar of leftover unsweetened applesauce, so commenced making Applesauce Oat Muffins. The recipe makes 12 regular muffins, but the batter filled the 7 cavities of the (well greased) mini cake pan perfectly. I popped the pan into the countertop oven and waited for 15 minutes.
The muffins rose and baked nicely, and were done at the 15 minute mark (I poked a toothpick into one to check). The moistness of the bottom of the muffins prevented them from sliding right out of the pan, but a gentle loosening of the edges with a butter knife released them without real damage.
The finished muffins are the size of a large biscuit, without the typical muffin “dome”; if you eat muffins for the top, you may feel let down. Personally, I could care less about the shape of the muffin, and found these biscuit-shaped ones just as tasty and enjoyable. I’ll be sure to grease the cavities generously with each batch I bake, and with use, the seasoning will continue to develop. Even though this is a mini “cake” pan, eggs could be fried in it, mini-quiches could be made…the possibilities!
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