1. Have you checked your oven temperature with an oven thermometer? That's how you KNOW when your oven reaches the correct temperature for baking - not according to any certain amount of time or a magic pre-heat beep from the oven. Many ovens are out of calibration. Just because the knob or digital read-out says 350F, doesn't necessarily MEAN that's the actual temperature. You need to check the temperature with the oven thermometer where the baking is going to be done (such as the middle rack in the middle of the oven). In some ovens the temperature can differ from one rack to another, as well as from the front of the oven to the back.

Baking muffins in an oven that is too hot will create asymmetrically shaped muffins. If the oven temperature is too cool, the muffins will be heavy and not rise correctly. Most muffins bake at 350°-400°F. Those temperatures vary according to the recipe and the type of batter used.

2. If the silicone muffin pans aren't working for you, then I'd suggest using standard metal pans. If you don't like the clean-up, use paper or foil muffin papers to line the muffin pans (metal OR silicone). Did you spray your muffin pan with PAM or other vegetable spray? That can discolor silicone (as well as metal pans), especially any over-spray on the surface top of the pan. I avoid PAM for spraying ANY type of pan - it's just nasty, gunky, stuff that builds up on the surface and is difficult to remove. Did you place the silicone muffin pan on a flat surface (a cookie sheet) during baking? There are different finishes on different brands of silicone bakeware, and some work better than others.

3. How did you mix your muffins? Only mix muffins until the dry ingredients are almost completely incorporated (even a small amount of dry ingreients still visible is okay - over-mixing ISN'T okay). DO NOT use an electric mixer because that results in too much gluten development and poor quality muffins. A wooden spoon or spatula will work fine, even a dinner fork is a good choice for mixing quick batters. A Danish Dough Whisk is actually one of the best investments for hand mixing (yeast breads, quick breads of all kinds, etc.). Your problem may partially be your mixing technique, oven temperature, as well as the pan.

Wait to mix and pan muffin batter AFTER the oven has completed pre-heating. You never want the batter to be waiting for the oven to heat (that goes for all batters that have chemical leavening - soda/baking powder - in them.) Due to the type of leavening (baking powder), you need to quickly mix, pan, and get it into a hot oven to get maximum lift out of the leavening. Baking powder reacts twice, once when it is mixed with the liquid ingredients, and again when it hits the hot oven. It will lose it's UMPH the longer it sits waiting for the oven to pre-heat.

4. Normally, a bread machine only needs "babysitting" for the first 10 minutes or so of mixing/kneading until you are sure the dough has the correct hydration. You have to do that with ANY bread making technique, not just bread machines.

I use a bread machine for nearly all my yeast breads anymore (dough only). It does a better job than either by-hand or stand mixers. King Arthur Test Kitchen uses Zojurishi BM for all their bread dough making for just those reasons.

Patience is still a virtue, even in this ADD/ADHD world where people choose baby carrots so they don't have to peel and chop whole carrots, salad in a bag, instead of choosing the greens, washing and preparing them, and a whole generation who only "cook" using a microwave. Slow cooking is a lost art.

-Grainlady

I have some of those silicone muffin pans. They aren't worth it. No--you are NOT supposed to grease them. Especially not with cooking spray (it leaves a residue, that over time will ruin pretty much any bakeware you use it on.)

I don't even use muffin pans any more. Instead, I just put those foil baking cups on a jelly roll pan. You use a foil cup, with a paper one inside. They're a little more expensive than the plain paper cups (way cheaper than using silicone and wasting your ingredients, though), but you can reuse the foil cups. You can get about 2 dozen muffins on a large jelly roll pan, clean up is much easier than washing any muffin pan, and you get a great product. I use a level #24 portion scoop of batter for each regular sized muffin, and get perfectly sized muffins every time.

Hello, jally, welcome to the Cooking Forum!

I had a silcone bundt pan and I couldn't even give the darned thing away, it was horrible. I second the "no", you aren't supposed to grease them. I've gone back to my 30 year old Bake King muffin pans, they still work like a charm.

The bread machine, though, I gotta tell you I love mine and I don't "babysit" it at all. I have the big Zojirushi, I dump everything in, put it on "dough" and go away for an hour and a half. I come back, take the dough out, shape it and let it rise, then bake it in the oven because I don't like the crust texture when I use the bread machine to bake it. And I use all my own recipes, even Grandma's white bread recipe that's at least 100 years old, and they all come out fine.

The pressure cooker? I have a 30 year old Presto that I love for things like chop suey, but I do have to watch it. It's great for some things, though, like corned beef and cabbage.

I have the Kitchen Aid food processor and even though I've never been able to successfully chop vegetables without turning them to mush, it's great for hummus.

Annie

Hi all, first of all,I found it very hard to get back to this post, because the e-notification didn't link me to my post, but rather to the latest posts. And because my system is EXTREMELY slow, its hard for me to go thru the torture again in case anyone provides the requested recipes.

Thank y'all for confirming that indeed I was correct in not having applied grease.

The only reason I mentioned re: the greasing, was cuz my sister told me I should have greased them, and she said then I would not have had the problem with sticky residue. Just shows you can't believe everyone all the time (hey, not even my sister, who happens to be a very experienced A1 cook/baker. She really turns out delicious stuff consistently, and has many friends & contact people.)

BTW, I've spoken with some local people who also said they either had problems with the silicone pans, or else that their friends had problems. It gets me mad, how marketers are always cranking out stuff to rip people off. I bought the pans at a closeout store, so couldn't return them. Which is why I've been trying to find even one site dedicated to providing recipes geared to silicone muffin pans. But for the life of me, I can't find such recipes!

P.S. To Grainlady

Firsta correction: My sister actually uses spray (not grease). Just wanted to be more "precise"

As for the not-mixing-over-much:

Uh.. people have mentioned that to me re: gluten-free baking. **However** - I actually found it's *not* so much the mixing, as much as making sure the batter has a "resistant" texture. I.E. it does *not* matter if I use an electric mixer, as long as I make sure to add *just* enough "dry" ingredients to give that resistance. In other words, if the batter is liquidy vs. "resistant" --- **then** it won't rise. And it doesn't matter if the recipe is gluten0free or not - its the resistance that counts.

Please forgive my incomplete responses due to my 1/2 broken laptop with broken keys, as well as SLOW system.

On a tangent, I composed a limerick about my predicament:
Hickory dickory dock
My refurbished thinkpad plus dock
Came with keys that don't work
and its hard drive's berserk
and its battery races the clock!
(I did 2 other limericks of the tech genre as well..