Pro Chefs Bake Muffins without Measuring Ingredients

[Corey] Hello! Hi!

[laughs]

What are we doing, Corey?

[Corey] You're going to make a recipe

eyeballing the measurements.

Like, we don't get cup measures?

[Corey] No. Teaspoon measures?

[Corey] No.

[ Corey] Anything? No.

Wow.

Oh, just no measuring spoons?

[Corey] Yeah.

Great.

[upbeat music]

Can I use the muffin tin?

So I can't go like this?

I have to go...

[Corey] You have to pour it.

Out of the bag?

[Corey] You have to go out of the bag

and pour it. Okay.

Oh, I get the recipe!

You get the recipe, you're just eyeballing everything.

Oh my God, that changes everything.

[upbeat music ends]

Wow, is this one of our recipes?

This is like the old time days.

Like, back in the day, they,

like, a cup was a cup,

and peoples' cups were different,

and then you had to, like, figure it out.

Um, so this is

gonna be fun.

[Corey] Are you precise with measurements when you cook?

Well we're baking.

It looks different.

It's kind of the one time you do kind of

have to be precise with certain things.

At home, I freestyle, but,

I spend 40 hours a day measuring things on a scale.

[Corey] 40 hours a day?

A week.

[laughs]

The last time I baked something was maybe, like,

five years ago.

I do not bake, ever.

Okay, so I used to have a job where I had to measure,

I had to weigh out cheese

for cheese plates at a restaurant,

and you had to measure out, like, one ounce portions

of each cheese, and there was, like,

a soft, semi soft, and a hard,

and by the end of it, I could weigh that [beep]

to the gram, essentially,

without the use of anything.

So,

lets hope that serves me in some way today.

All right, so today we're gonna make some

cornbread muffins with maple butter.

First and foremost, I don't like cornbread.

Skipping the maple butter, we can do that after

we throw these in the oven.

Which I'm assuming, we're gonna do.

Preheat the oven to 375.

So we gotta guess that too?

I put my hand in there or something?

My oven is preheated to 375.

Is the oven already on?

I see.

Very important to read the whole recipe

before you start cooking, not only when you are

being challenged to do so.

Yeah, so I'm just gonna eyeball this together, here.

I'm thinking I'm going to use the muffin tin,

just as like a good, rough indicator.

It's not cheating!

I'm using the tools that we're given to me.

The dry ingredients, so it's one cup

of yellow corn meal.

Sift cornmeal.

Need a sifter.

Okay, here we go.

I hate this [beep].

All right, so I need a cup.

So, one thing I'm terrible at is spacial relationships.

And volumes.

I have no idea how much this actually weighs,

but it looks pretty close to a cup.

Probably a one cup.

I'm going to say this looks like about a quarter cup,

so I am gonna use four of these.

[jazzy drums]

I think these are each half a cup,

so I think that's about one cup.

I care more about the ratios of things.

Like, I care more about the ratio of dry to liquid

than I do about, like, measuring to a cup.

That works, I like this.

Okay, flour.

Oops, more than a cup.

[laughs]

This is great, this is how we should do it all.

Okay, equal parts cornmeal and flour.

Add a quarter cup of this.

[ragtime piano music] [laughs]

I'm just on the vaudeville thing now, so.

So what is a quarter cup of sugar?

This kind of looks like a quarter cup,

so we're gonna go with that.

This is salt!

Oh, my God!

Quarter cup. [noncommittal noise]

Put that in the landing zone right there.

Little quarter cup.

Yeah, right there.

A tablespoon of baking powder.

I think I can figure it out.

[hums thoughtfully]

We're just going to guess.

Tablespoon.

Maybe, should I do the hand?

One,

two,

and a half.

One tablespoon, added.

Quarter teaspoon of salt.

So I'm just gonna do one little pinch.

Salt.

Bam!

This, I don't care as much about.

And it should just taste good.

And that's all our dry stuff.

Whisking dry ingredients actually takes longer

than you think, this is a common thing people mess up.

Give it a minute.

Here, first we'll do the mix-o,

and then we'll do the sift-o.

[humming]

So now, sifting.

Oops.

[yells]

Don't really want to sift these, because I don't...

You know?

If they're not gonna be perfect,

they're not gonna be perfect.

There you go, look at that.

[wooden spoon tapping]

So I'm gonna put that off to the side,

and we're gonna do wet ingredients.

All right, so I've got one egg.

Egg.

Buttermilk, one cup.

Okay.

[Chris] Cup of buttermilk.

Oh, was this shake,

shooken, shaken?

Can we use the shaked buttermilk?

[shaking buttermilk]

You know, there's measurements

on the side of the buttermilk.

Bottle.

[laughs]

Literally has a cup measure on the side.

I don't know if anyone spotted that yet.

Oh yeah, I mean,

this is great if you find yourself camping

and you want to make muffins

and you only have a muffin tin.

[laughs]

For baked goods, I tend not to eyeball,

because, you know,

why invite failure, you know?

So I'm just gonna--

Oh, wait a minute, [beep].

I didn't mix.

Do I need to?

Yeah.

Well, it's already [beep], so

we're just gonna keep going.

All right, those are supposed to get whisked

in another bowl.

That's what happens when you don't read a recipe

and you're not used to reading recipes.

So, this is just gonna all get whisked together right now.

Whisk in melted butter, all right.

All right, so we want five tablespoons here.

Oh, five tablespoons of butter,

I was ready to dump that whole thing right in.

[whisk clinking on bowl]

It's kind of

unmelted.

Could I zap it?

[bowl clanking]

[butter exploding]

Oh, too far! [laughs]

No!

Oh, Claire just cleaned the microwave.

She's gonna be so upset!

Okay, and now we're ready to combine ingredients.

I want to do it slowly.

Make sure it's not too clumpy.

Okay, just to incorporate,

do not over-mix!

That's the single most important thing

to keeping a muffin tender and not tough.

Tough little muffins.

[laughs]

They've had a tough life.

[laughs]

And they came out tough later.

Here, let me hold this for you.

Hold it.

[yelps]

Easy! [laughs]

I'm not wearing an apron!

When's the last time you baked something?

I don't know, years.

Never?

Not never. Have you ever?

Yes, I've baked things, but, like, not--

Ow! Sorry.

Oh, this is dry.

[bowl clanking]

My gut tells me that this needs more liquid.

If it looks a little dry,

then add a little more wet.

Seems a little loose, but,

the hell do I know?

Oh, don't over-mix!

[bowl clanking]

Yeah.

[laughs] I would chill

with whatever you're doing right now.

I mean, basically, you can eyeball

a baking dish that you've done a million times,

so you kind of have, like, a rough idea

of how it looks like.

I think this is muffin consistency,

I don't make a lot of muffins at home, TBH.

How far off am I?

And I would just go for it now.

Oh, yeah? Yeah.

I think they're gonna be great.

All right.

Molly, they're not gonna be great.

When I put this in the oven, I'm praying.

Oh, here we go.

And how many are we supposed to make, here?

I'm just hoping that we reach 12.

I'm gonna run out of batter.

I don't know if I have enough.

The batter does seem a little bit scant.

We're not gonna reach 12.

[laughs]

I'm gonna make it work.

I know, like, one or two, I could definitely

pull something out of.

We're gonna have to rob Peter to pay Paul

a little, I think.

We're gonna steal.

I'm looking like, I think, probably a little empty, here.

I don't think I ever made muffins in my life.

I read the recipe a little bit more in detail

and it says that one muffin cup

is a third of a cup, so I

am totally off.

[sighs]

[Brad] Yeah, this isn't gonna be good.

Yeah, this might not work out, boys and girls.

Just give them a leg up.

They're gonna be a funny shape,

I'm not fixing the divot that I took out

of each of them for no apparent reason

except I am lazy.

Salt.

You know what, I'm gonna disregard that last step.

Two empty cups.

Okay, I'm gonna pop them in the oven.

[muffin tin clanking]

I guess.

My masterpiece, don't look at this one.

So, starting the timers, 15 minutes.

[laughs]

Let me bang those down,

all right? [muffin tin clanking]

[Corey] Why do you bang them down?

I don't know.

Timer.

Hey Siri, set timer for 15 minutes.

Muffins will be pale. [scoffs]

We'll see about that.

Cool on racks for 10 minutes, great.

Serve with maple butter, all right, let's do that.

Okay, maple butter, three quarters of a cup,

one and a half sticks unsalted butter, room temperature.

One and a half sticks of butter?

I got this one.

It's like, you have to wonder about a recipe

that's calling for that much butter,

that much maple syrup,

calling for unsalted butter, but no salt.

Just, like, you know.

I'm gonna put some salt in there.

Sweet and salty.

It's gonna taste better.

So we'll start small.

We'll start with the--

We need three and a half, we'll start with the half.

So I'm gonna eyeball it using this.

Oh, but I need to have it in--

This is not easy.

I don't

really think this

syrup measurement matters all that much

in terms of precision.

Slow little drizzle.

God, I love maple syrup, it's so good.

If I had flaky salt, I would add it.

Pretty good.

Mapley.

Great.

All right, that looks very nice.

I love a corn muffin.

Yeah, utterly adore them.

[mixer clanging]

The butter might be fine, but the muffins...

Rest in peace.

[clock ticking] All right, cool.

So it's been 15 minutes,

we're gonna go see how these little muffins turned out.

Ah, okay.

[exclaims in Spanish]

Okay.

They look okay.

Okay, not bad.

We got two weird ones.

Look at those.

[sighs]

I'm not making anyone proud with these.

They're very even.

So, like, great job, me.

That's guy's a little small.

These muffins are

not very cute.

But whatever, we're moving on.

[speaking Spanish]

Is this what we're looking for?

[Molly] How'd they turn out, Brad?

I don't know yet.

[Molly] They look kind of

squat?

There wasn't a lot of batter in it.

[Molly] Oh.

We had to pull--

What's the matter?

I'm hungry.

Well, don't start here, bud.

Okay, so if this is our best looking muffin,

we know we're in trouble.

[jazzy drums]

They're brown on the undersides.

That's good.

It has a really nice crumb.

Super fluffy.

I think in terms of the, like,

integrity of the muffin, and the ratios of things,

this looks pretty correct.

To me.

What do I know?

They have a nice little, like,

crust on the bottom.

They're not as tender as I would like.

Wow, look at that crumb,

look at that light texture.

Mine were better.

Wait.

No, no, no, wait, wait, wait!

[hums]

That's actually pretty good!

Loosely.

Pretty good.

Good to pretty good?

I can live with that.

Thank you, you guys can eat them.

[speaks French]

Okay, my final thought is that

this is a properly baked muffin that sucks.

That is NFB, I'm sorry,

that's just as good as Brad's, maybe even better.

Um, yeah, there you go.

There's a half a muffin.

There's butter.

[knife clinking on bowl]

[speaks French]

[laughs]

Shut it down!

Shut it down.

Bye.