Sourdough Gingerbread Muffins

This easy recipe for sourdough gingerbread muffins uses pantry staples to create a rich, hearty gingerbread treat - perfect for the festive season!

There's no need for any fresh ginger or specialised ingredients. You can easily create these sourdough discard treats right from basic pantry ingredients.

These sourdough gingerbread muffins make a lovely snack with hot coffee or even breakfast on the go.

I've included a few different ways to to serve them so you can tailor them to suit your own tastes and needs.

Sourdough Gingerbread Muffins from Pantry Ingredients

It's important to me to be able to bake something delicious for my family without having to take a trip to the store.

I always have a good stock of pantry staples on hand - things like flour, sugar, basic spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, basic oils like olive and vegetable.

Having things like this on hand always ensures I can bake something quickly and easily.

These sourdough gingerbread muffins are a cinch to make and you won't need to go anywhere!

I have chosen to use similar spices to this sourdough gingerbread cookie recipe and these sourdough gingerbread rolls - they are generally things you will on hand (and you can read below how to tweak the spices if you don't have one or two of them).

How To Make Sourdough Gingerbread Muffins

Sourdough gingerbread muffins could not be easier!

They will literally be mixed and out of the oven in just 30 minutes! Plus they use a whopping 200g of sourdough starter (can be discard if you have some on hand to use up).

Here's how to make sourdough gingerbread muffins:

1. Preheat your oven.
   
2. Mix the sourdough starter, eggs, oil, milk, molasses and vanilla together in a bowl. Make sure you mix them together really well and that the eggs are well beaten.
   
3. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, spices and sugar in a separate bowl.
   
4. Now pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients.
   
5. Use a spatula and mix them until they are just combined – do not over mix!!
   
6. Spoon the muffin batter into a greased 12 hole muffin tin.
   
7. Bake until golden.
   
8. Cool on a wire rack.

Spice Mix for Gingerbread

These muffins use a blend of dried and ground spices to create the gingerbread flavor.

You don't need fresh ginger - dried ginger will give you a much better flavor profile. Plus it's an easy spice to have on hand in your spice draw.

I've chosen to use a blend of ginger, cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom.

If you don't have All Spice, I would advise just to leave it out and don't adjust anything else. Cardamom is also one that you could leave out without too much impact on flavor.

While I like to be pretty exact with other measurements, I've given the spice measurements in teaspoons (which means there will be some variation).

I have done this because many scales (mine included) don't register such small amounts.

Obviously, ginger is the non negotiable here, but you can certainly play around with the amounts of other spices. If you like a less gingery or spicy flavor profile, certainly reduce the amount of ginger.

Serving & Topping Sourdough Gingerbread Muffins

While these muffins are delicious eat warm from the oven, there are also a few ways you can jazz them up and make them even a little bit fancy (perfect for the festive season):

• Dust with powdered sugar for a real gingerbread look
  
• Drizzle with sugar glaze (add water to powdered sugar until it forms a glaze) drizzle over the top of the warm muffins.
  
• Make some gingerbread dust (I blitzed these sourdough gingerbread cookies into dust in a food processor) and then sprinkle that over the top of the glazed muffins.
  
• Drizzle with glaze and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
  
• Top with a vanilla cream cheese frosting for the ultimate indulgence! You'll find my recipe for vanilla cream cheese frosting at the bottom of this recipe for sourdough cinnamon rolls.

Share the sourdough love!