This Genius Cupcake Hack Gives You Grease-Free Bottoms Every Time (2024)

You can never learn too many baking hacks! Whether you need to bring eggs to room temperature quickly, learn how to perfectly line a cake pan with parchment paper, or figure out how to pick out a pesky bit of eggshell, there are tips and tricks galore for smoother baking adventures. To add to that list, here's a new one to try: Putting rice in your cupcake or muffin tins.

If you've ever baked cupcakes and followed the recipe to a tee but still wound up with greasy bottoms, you're not alone—with their high butter content, it's kind of hard to avoid! However, there's a super easy way to fix this problem with a common pantry staple.

Next time you bake cupcakes or muffins, simply sprinkle rice in the bottom of the pan, then place the cupcake liner on top and fill with batter. Instead of the grease collecting at the bottom of your baked good, the rice will absorb the excess moisture without burning.

To put this trick to the test, our Food Director Erin Merhar tried it out for herself on a batch of muffins. She made 12 muffins, putting a thin layer of rice in the bottom of the tin for half of them to see if it really did make a difference.

"The muffins baked over the rice had a much drier bottom. Though this didn’t really alter the taste of the dish, it certainly made for a cleaner eating experience," she says.

Clearly, the muffin on the left has a much cleaner bottom with no grease visible at all! Erin notes that she did use whole grain flour, which would naturally soak up a lot of the excess oil, but she says it's a tip she'll definitely use again.

"For something like a cupcake or a muffin made with 100% all-purpose flour, I would be willing to bet that this trick is super helpful!" she adds.

If you want to try this experiment for yourself, we have plenty of mouth-watering recipes to test it with. How about the Chocolate Creme Cupcakes or Cookies 'n' Creme Cupcakes recipes straight from The Mercantile's bakery? Or a batch of Pumpkin Spice Muffins couldn't hurt. It's all in the name of science, after all!