Sometimes, baking can be trickier than anticipated. Say you’ve got a fabulous lemon muffin that you want to jazz up with some blueberries, or a spice cake that’s begging for some crystallized ginger chunks. All you’ve got to do is add in those extra ingredients, right?
You probably already know what we’re going to say: wrong. One of the challenges of adding chunky ingredients—dried fruit, fresh fruit, chocolate chips, etc.—to batter is that they tend to sink to the bottom. And that may or may not be what you’re going for.
Why? There are a few reasons:
- Chunky ingredients are denser and usually heavier than the batter—so down they go. The heavier the ingredient, the more it will sink, until you have a nice bottom crust of blueberries instead of evenly distributed, gooey berry goodness.
- If your batter is slack or runny, it will be particularly susceptible to sinking ingredients. That’s one reason you may have experienced this issue with some recipes but not with others.
- The fruit is covered in a syrup (such as glace cherries). The syrup makes the fruit heavy and slippery.
How to Prevent Fruit from Sinking in Baked Goods
There are a few solutions to sinking ingredients, all of which are simple.
In general, we recommend coating chunky ingredients in flour before mixing them into your batter. Not too much flour—just a tablespoon or two. The flour will adhere to the batter and effectively lock your fruit or chocolate chips into place.
For slack or thin batters, you may also need to use smaller chunks—think mini chocolate chips or chopping up your fruit into smaller bits. Remember that dried fruit tends to be lighter than fresh fruit. Candied fruit or fruit preserved in syrup will be heavier.
If you are using fruit preserved in syrup, you will need to take one additional step: rinse the syrup off. This will take some of the weight out of the ingredient and make it less slippery. Cut into smaller chunks if needed and coat in flour before adding to your batter.
It can be frustrating when bakes don’t turn out as expected or the way they are “supposed” to. But remember…
Sometimes It’s Okay to Break the Rules!
Baking is a science… but it’s also an art. Leave some room for yourself to play and experiment. You never know what you might come up with! Food is constantly evolving, so don’t box yourself in by what’s considered to be the “right” way to do things.
For example, our Chocolate Treasure Muffin boldly defies the rules when it comes to sinking ingredients. When developing that muffin, we discovered that we actually wanted the chocolate chips to sink to the bottom. Doing so created a delicious bottom crust of chocolate—a treasure trove, if you will.
Breaking the “evenly distributed” rule is one of the things that makes our Chocolate Treasure Muffin unique. In the end, all that matters is what you want the experience of eating your baked good to be. Perfectly distributed, fresh blueberries throughout? Great. A bottom crust of crispy chocolate? Fabulous. Dainty nibs of candied ginger in every bite? Spectacular.
The choice is yours.