Pistachio Muffins Recipe

Soft and moist with delightfully crunchy tops, this recipe for Pistachio Muffins is a cheerful way to start the morning. These muffins use pistachio pudding mix to provide flavor and moisture to this recipe. If you need a surefire recipe for a work breakfast, this one will be a hit.

Pudding mixes were first manufactured and sold in 1918. Before that time, cooks had to use cream, milk, a thickener like flour or cornstarch, and eggs to make a pudding. The pudding had to be cooked on a stovetop for a time and then refrigerated to thicken and set up.

In 1918, My-T-Fine created the first mix for a pudding, but, like the homemade mixtures, it had to be cooked to set up. In the late 1930s, a new product was marketed called instant pudding. This cornstarch-based dessert simply needed to be whisked together with cold milk to make a delicious, quick, and easy dessert.

Table of Contents Show

Pistachio Muffins Recipe

Equipment

Ingredients 1x2x3x

Instructions

Notes

Pistachio Muffins Recipe

April Freeman

Delicately flavored with pistachio pudding and featuring a crunchy sugary topping, our recipe for Pistachio Muffins makes a great breakfast treat or an afternoon snack. No worries about your muffins being too dry either! The pudding mix adds extra moistness that will last for several days.

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Prep Time 15 mins

Cook Time 18 mins

Total Time 33 mins

Cuisine American

Servings 12 Servings

Equipment

• Oven
• 12 cup muffin
• muffin liners
• microwave in melting the butter
• Wire whisk
• Mixing bowl
• Spoon
• Wire Rack

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• ½ cup salted butter
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• one 3.4 ounce package instant pistachio pudding mix
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup milk
• 2 cups flour
• ¼ cup sugar for topping

Instructions

 

• Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and line a 12 cup muffin tin with muffin liners.
  
• Place the butter In a large microwave safe mixing bowl. Microwave the butter in 20 second bursts, stirring after every burst until it is melted.
• Use a wire whisk to mix together the butter and the sugar. Whisk this for about a minute or until the sugar is dissolved.
  
• Add the eggs and vanilla, continuing to whisk until the ingredients are fully combined.
  
• Add the pistachio pudding mix, along with the baking powder, salt, and the mix. Whisk the mixture again.
  
• Add the flour and whisk it again, just until the flour is incorporated. Do not over mix or your muffins will be tough.
• Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling them until they are about ⅔ full.
• Sprinkle the ¼ cup sugar on top of the muffin batter, dividing it equally between each muffin cup.
• Bake the muffins in the hot oven for about 8 minutes and then reduce the heat in the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 10 to 12 more minutes or until the tops of the muffins are golden brown and spring back when touched lightly.
  
• Take the muffins out of the oven and put them on a wire rack to cool.
  
• Serve the muffins warm or at room temperature.
• Store muffins in a tightly sealed zip top bag at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Notes

These puddings would set up in just a few minutes and no cooking was required. These kinds of desserts are still popular even today because they are so easy to make. Even a small child can whip up a batch of pudding for a snack or dessert.

In no time at all, clever cooks and bakers began using instant pudding as an ingredient in other desserts. Many adults of today remember their first foray into cooking as the day they learned to measure milk into a bowl, add a packet of instant pudding, and whisk it together for an after school snack. The small boxes of green pudding mix labeled Pistachio Pudding Mix that you might find on the grocery store shelves are seldom made into pudding.

In fact, most people use these mixes to create a recipe called Watergate Salad. This salad is known by several different names, like Green Fluff or Pistachio Delight. This dessert made of pistachio pudding mix, Cool Whip, and pineapple mixed with miniature marshmallows is an interesting concoction from the 1970s.

The pistachio flavored pudding mix was released by the Kraft food company in 1975, the same year that they developed the recipe for Pistachio Pineapple Delight, later renamed Watergate Salad. However, you can use those ubiquitous green boxes of pudding mix to make other delicious baked goods. Our recipe for Pistachio Muffins is one such treat.

It is not uncommon for bakers to add pudding mixes to baked goods to improve the texture and flavor of cakes, muffins, and cookies. This recipe does just that. The pudding provides extra moisture and flavoring to the muffins.

These muffins have the classic pale green color that you would come to expect from something made with pistachio pudding. The pudding mix provides a sprinkling of chopped pistachios in the batter. However, if you want to increase the nuts in this recipe, you can add a couple of handfuls of chopped pistachios.

Be sure to use unsalted pistachios in this recipe to keep your muffins from being too salty. The muffins have a beautifully domed top. The trick to developing that lovely muffin top is to put the muffins in a very hot oven.

This causes the gasses trapped in the muffin to rise quickly and create the domed top. Then, you’ll reduce the heat in the oven to keep the muffin from burning while finishing out the baking time.

Keyword Pistachio Muffins, pistachio pudding

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