I tried baking chocolate chip courgette muffins in my air fryer for the first time yesterday since my brand-new oven is faulty, and I’m still waiting for a replacement.
I made sure not to overfill the silicone cases—there was plenty of room—but they still peaked a lot, and some even exploded at the tops.
I baked them at 160°C for 15 minutes, as most sources recommended, but I’m wondering if that temperature was too high. Has anyone experienced this before or have any tips? Luckily, they still tasted great!
Air fryers are much smaller than an oven, so they heat up and cook faster. Next time I would lower the temp by 25F (about 10-12C) if you want to bake in the air fryer again.
Linden said:
Air fryers are much smaller than an oven, so they heat up and cook faster. Next time I would lower the temp by 25F (about 10-12C) if you want to bake in the air fryer again.
Linden said:
Air fryers are much smaller than an oven, so they heat up and cook faster. Next time I would lower the temp by 25F (about 10-12C) if you want to bake in the air fryer again.
Yeah, my first instinct before I even read the post was that it’s too hot.
Alby said:
Maybe a little too much baking soda/baking powder? Did you follow a recipe?
Also, I think you should lean into it. make them look like elephant seals.
I followed a recipe that I’ve tried before in an oven. They only did this in the air fryer. I’ve had a cake do something similar in a too hot oven, so I think it might be that.
It’s just confusing because every air fryer muffin recipe I’ve seen bakes at 160 and that’s what I did. My sister-in-law even has the same model and bakes them the same way, and hers come out fine .
Alby said: @Tatum
Might not be the temperature, but the time spent in the fryer. Hope you figure it out.
Possibly. But I checked them at the 11min mark and they were risen like this but raw inside. I was hoping to do a baked cake/pudding in there tonight but I’m not sure I’m brave enough after this .
@Tatum
That is called ‘capping.’ The outside of your batter is baking way too fast, and it creates a ‘cap,’ and then when the raw batter underneath rises and expands, it follows whatever the path of least resistance is and explodes out wherever.
You can’t bake batter-based items in convection ovens; it’s just not the ideal environment for them.
@Jesse
This was so good until the last sentence. You can absolutely (and I’d argue should) bake in convection, but you do have to modify. Convection will give greater ‘oven spring’ than a standard oven and will also dry out the top of your baked goods faster. You can counter that by lowering the temperature (approximately -25F, -15C) and reducing the time in oven by 25%. You’ll get better crusts and faster bake times, but you do have to adjust down. If your oven retains heat really well (higher quality ovens are often better insulated), you may need to lower the temperature even further.
The air fryer is a smaller, more intense heat than the normal oven.
What happened to your muffins is that the surface dried out too early because of the intense airflow, and your remaining batter had nowhere to go under the lid.
Cakes always turn out the best when the fan is turned off as the airflow dries it out.
@Ariel
Yes, I think this is the answer. I wouldn’t normally bake in the air fryer but my sister-in-law has the same model and bakes muffins successfully all the time. So I thought I’d give it a go because my oven is broken, and I needed these muffins in my life.
Definitely seals influenced cupcakes. Other possibilities: overmixing brought in too much air into the batter, or, not enough fat to restrict gluten matrix lengthening, or too much baking powder/soda caused over rising. Possibly not enough sugar and gluten strands formed longer more than needed? Just thinking aloud, cause I just got done with the baking radio gluten podcast.
make them look like elephant seals.
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Hope you figure it out.
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