Baking Muffins – MmmMmmmHmmm!

When steam baking I don't use rocks anymore. Just add enough water to the pot to float the batter/dough filled Ti400 cup. Works great and leaves me enough water for a cuppa.

Oh, of course, I should have used my cup. Is there any downside to that? How much batter can you put in the cup, or any mold, without having issues like uncooked batter? 1", 1.5", 2"?

With Betty Crocker Warm Ones, I can fill my Evernew 400 about half full. A little less with Bisquick or Corn Bread.

We eat muffins for breakfast about every other day on the trail. Put enough mix for two muffins in a small Glad baking bag, add water, knead until well mixed. Drop in 2qt. pot with about half inch of boiling water in the bottom, cook for 20 minutes. They don't brown, but taste and texture seems to be about the same.

I put pre-cooked sausage or bacon in my biscuit batter. Wish I had two right now.

I finally got a chance to bake some muffins on the trail. My wife and I cooked two banana chocolate chip muffins in about 30-35 min on approx. 1 oz of methanol using my FeatherFire stove open 1 full turn (out of 6).

The muffins were delicious and I'm going to keep doing this, but we do need to make more somehow in the future. One muffin each is really just a tease.

Use the large "Squishy Bowl"

That's a fantastic idea Jeff!

And the squishy bowls are silicone as well – in all honesty, most any silicone baking dish will work great. Just look for a temp rating of 350 to 450* :-)

MUFFIN steam-baking skills!

Instructional video:

What Size are the silicone baking cups used in the video, 3 inch or 1.9 inch?

Since first reading this thread I knew I wanted to give steam baking a try. Bought the silicon cups, baked muffins, cornbread, biscuits and scrambled eggs. YUMM!

my question is, how well do paper cups work with steam baking?

Paper gets soggy but the aluminum cupcake liners sold next to them in stores work perfect! They are as light as the paper :-)

Many of those aluminum ones are paper lined and it just creates a mess when steam baking. Just my opinion, but the silicone ones are the way to go and the muffins come out nicely.

On the foil ones….Reynolds sells them and while they are stacked foil, paper, foil,paper….all one does is pluck the paper off and use the foil. They do this for two reasons: the foil doesn't stick together when shipped and as well when most people bake muffins they want the paper for the inside and the foil for show.
So simple: you just use the foil. Not hard at all. The weight is extremely minimal for a pack.

While silicone liners do work best they also weigh the most of all options. And are much pricier when a person is not sure they will be doing a lot of steam baking.

I've been using the silicon cups and everything turns out great. BUT, the clean up is a pain. No, the muffins or whatever isn't sticking, but little bits of dough gets caught in the pleats inside the cup. At home cleaning isn't a big deal, but in the woods it's more troublesome. I was asking about paper, if they worked then I could burn the cups when done with baking.

Sarah- I'll give the foil version a try, thanks

If you let the muffins cool a bit longer the dough generally doesn't get caught. I usually let mine cool for 5 to 10 minutes and have never had an issue.

Laurie- your suggestion to let cool a little longer helped a lot, thanks. Still dough remains in the pleats, but much, much easier to clean up.

I think I'll try a drop of olive oil and wipe inside the cup next time to see if that makes it even cleaner.

I don't know whether or not it will work on silicone baking cups, but I've found that lightly coating the interior of a baking pan reduces the amount of stuff that sticks to it a lot.

After using the sil-cups on a few weekend trips, I decided the clean up was still more than I wanted to deal with, yes I like things simple. So, I started to think about an easier and more UL solution. Parchment paper, tried it, liked it, perfect solution for me, a solo hiker, I don't bake for groups, but on occasion maybe a hiking buddy. Jim Bailey are you listening… :-P

By cutting the paper and lining my mug I get one big muffin, no clean up, lighter than the sil-cups, easier to pack, I'm able to use the same pieces of parchment for two-three rounds of baking and parchment paper makes great fire starter. I did a test this morning using an esbit tab, worked out great.

Using my Trail Designs Caldera Tri-Ti ULC cone, 2-Ti stakes, the grate from the wood burner portion of the Tri-Ti was used as my riser inside the mug, GramCracker stove with Esbit tab and my Mountain Laurel Designs 850ml Ti mug.

Muffin mix is premixed at home and packed in a ziploc bag with all the ingredients, in camp I add water to the bag and knead, line the mug with parchment paper (precut at home to fit mug,) add batter to mug and place over flame for 12-13 min.

mmmmmmm, tasty muffins, scones, biscuits…next best thing to the yummy muffin, there's no clean up, simply let the parchment air dry from the moisture created by the steam, brush off any crumbs, fold and store for the next round or use as fire starter.

Just noticed your post JJ – great idea!

Parchment paper is great and I use it quite a bit. Beware though… some brands are not very useful. I wrote a blog post about it a while back. My friend had bought a brand called Multi-Bake when he was visiting the US on a shopping trip. Here’s the story…

parchment paper — a brand to avoid

edited to format link

I've no doubt this is a silly question, but you do add water to the cooking pot, correct? How much water is in there (or how much below the top of the screen insert)? And is there a reason you double line the cookpot with the parchment paper?

Thanks much,

Doug

Douglas- not silly at all, yes I add water to the mug, about 1/2-inch so it's just slightly below the grate/screen insert

parchment paper- I use two pieces rather than one, one wraps around the wall of the mug and the second piece covers the bottom. It's just easier to use two pieces with a narrow mug.

– this thread warms my heart.