Whole-Wheat Blueberry Muffins

Name: Whole-Wheat Blueberry Muffins
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Yield: 12 muffins

Perfect kid-approved, make-ahead snack with fresh or frozen berries.

Video

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Makes: 12 muffins
Nutrition Facts: View label

Ingredients

1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour

½ cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 egg

⅓ cup vegetable oil

⅓ cup nonfat or 1% milk

½ cup unsweetened applesauce

2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Directions

Wash hands with soap and water.
Rinse fresh fruits under running water before preparing.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease 12 muffin cups.
In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.
In a medium bowl, mix the oil, egg, milk and applesauce until smooth.
Stir the liquid ingredients into the flour mixture until just moistened. Lightly stir in the blueberries.
Fill each muffin cup about ¾ full.
Bake about 20 minutes, or until the muffin tops are golden brown. A toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin should come out moist but without batter.

Notes

To use sweetened applesauce, remove about 1 ½ teaspoons of sugar from the measured amount.
To bake as a bread, use a greased 8- or 9-inch bread pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 45 to 50 minutes.
No whole-wheat flour? Replace with all-purpose flour.
Replace blueberries with another fruit. Try diced apples with 1 teaspoon cinnamon, fresh or frozen cranberries with 1 ½ teaspoon orange zest, or diced bananas.

Food Sensitivities or Preferences

For an egg-free muffin, substitute 3 Tablespoons aquafaba (the liquid drained from any canned white bean such as garbanzo beans) for the egg. Freeze extra aquafaba in 3 Tablespoon portions to substitute for 1 egg in other baked goods such as cookies and muffins.
For a gluten-free muffin, substitute your favorite all-purpose gluten-free flour mix. The rise and texture will be a little different than a muffin made with wheat flour.
For a dairy-free muffin, substitute soy milk or another non-dairy milk substitute.
For a soy-free muffin, avoid soybean oil.
Combine any of the free-from suggestions above for the muffin of your choice. The nutrient content and texture will be different with different ingredients but our testers liked the variations.

Featured in a Food Hero Monthly

Comments

Submitted by Brooke Robinson on Wed, 08/28/2024 - 15:36

Delicious whole-wheat blueberry muffins! I used unsweetened soy milk, and it worked great. I'm planning to prep more for an easy breakfast or snack on busy days. Great way to use blueberries during the summer when there is an abundance of them!

Submitted by sydney429 on Mon, 04/06/2020 - 09:02

Hi my name is Sydney, I made these muffins in the video above with my cousin. They were fun and easy to make. Everybody loved them! I actually used huckleberries because I did not have blueberries and they turned out great!

Submitted by AngMath on Wed, 03/18/2020 - 11:14

I recommend keeping the added fruit to about 1 cup. Using 2 cups of fruit tends to make the muffins a bit soggy due to the added moisture. The apple cinnamon and banana recipe variations are the most popular in my home and with community groups.

Submitted by zamoraem on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 14:16

We made these to sample at a food pantry night and everyone commented about how good they were!

Submitted by Vrexei (not verified) on Sun, 03/25/2018 - 15:34

Not sure whose kid approved these but they get 2 thumbs down from my 4 year old who says they are too sweet.

Submitted by elaine s on Mon, 03/26/2018 - 10:44

How wonderful that your child has not developed a taste for sweetness. You can easily reduce the sugar in this recipe to 1/2 cup. And double check that the applesauce and blueberries don't have added sugar. Further reduction may cause texture changes in the muffin. The recipe has been tasted by over 1848 kids and 83% "Liked!" the taste.

The Food Hero Team,

Submitted by AngMath on Tue, 12/27/2016 - 12:02

After making this recipe many times with both adults and youth as well as in my own home, I have come to see this recipe as an excellent base muffin recipe. I might even suggest renaming the recipe:) Diced fresh apple (add cinnamon), diced peaches, fresh cranberries (add orange zest) and any dried fruit work well in this recipe; the possibilities are endless. I also routinely reduce the sugar to 1/2 cup with no problems. No matter what version is made, these muffins are gobbled up.

Submitted by AngMath on Tue, 11/01/2016 - 13:23

Blueberries can get expensive this time of year. I have found that diced apple is a nice substitute for the blueberries; I like to add a little cinnamon as well.

Submitted by lindaeaton on Thu, 05/19/2016 - 17:58

I made these for our pantry project last month. When I returned this month with a different recipe, people were still talking about how much they liked these muffins!

Submitted by mandy.hatfield@... on Mon, 04/27/2015 - 15:43

A group of us sampled this recipe and really liked it but we would like to have a note added about using sweetened applesauce. How much should the sugar be reduced when using sweetened applesauce? That is what normally gets donated at the food pantries so it would be nice to have that as an added note.

Submitted by elaine s on Mon, 05/04/2015 - 09:49

To use sweetened applesauce instead of unsweetened, measure the sugar then remove about 1 1/2 teaspoons of the sugar. This is about the amount of sugar in 1/2 cup of applesauce. We added it to the notes above.

Food Hero Team

Submitted by tierrabonita on Mon, 04/13/2015 - 17:18

These were even better than we expected (all whole grain flour was yummy and you couldn't tell at all that there was applesauce in them). Note for us the batter was thicker than you would expect a muffin batter to be (the only variation on the recipe we did was use buttermilk versus regular milk) but they turned out as perfectly yummy, fluffy muffins.