In our test kitchen, we almost always use light colored pans for baking. (Cookies, for example, get too dark if baked on a dark colored sheet pan). But lately, we’ve been hearing buzz about muffins baking up better in darker pans, so we decided to whip up a few batches using both a light and a dark pan to test this out. Several batches of banana chocolate-chip muffins later, we had our verdict (and a good tip to pass along): The dark pans gave us a more golden, more appealing result. And, who doesn’t love a perfectly golden muffin top?

If you’ve ever done a side-by-side experiment like this in your own (test) kitchen, let us know about it. And if you’re looking for an excuse to bake a batch of muffins (or two), you can use our recipe builder to create your own muffin recipe.