How to prevent egg muffins sticking to non-stick muffin pan?

Question

I have good quality non-stick mini-muffin pans that are in perfect condition, and I spray them very thoroughly with canola cooking spray. I don't have a problem with sticking with anything except my egg muffins, but every single one has to be pried out, leaving bits stuck to the pan no matter how careful I am.

The recipe is:

1 lb. breakfast sausage, 8 oz. finely chopped mushrooms, 1 diced onion, 2 T. diced red pepper, 15 eggs, 1 c. heavy cream, (spices), and 2 c. shredded cheese

Each well holds 1 T., and I bake them at 350 for about 14 minutes.

We will soon be making about 750 of these little muffins for an event, and I don't want to burn out all my volunteers or be serving ragged quiche muffins! Any ideas?

Answer 1

Non stick only goes so far, and eggs are some of the stickiest ingredients you can have. My advice would be if you can to heat the pans up first before spraying with oil and adding eggs, that way the egg won't adhere. If that's not an option then use cake release or butter and flour the pans, spraying oil isn't good enough, you need more of a barrier.

There's a related question on the site here.

Answer 2

I was able to fix the problem simply by adjusting the heat and cooking time. I had been baking at 350 until they looked done (14 minutes), so I tried bumping up the temp to 400, but they still stuck to the pan. One last try to 425 worked like a charm! I took them out earlier, too, after just 6 minutes, while they were still wet-looking and pale in the middle. Eureka--zero sticking! Higher heat seemed counter-intuitive to me, since I hate over-cooked egg, but I think it cooked them so fast (starting with a cold pan) they never got a chance to over bake.

Thanks for all your suggestions!