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Healthier & Awesome: Altered Blueberry Muffins Recipe
I love blueberry muffins. They always remind me of summer visits to Cape Cod when I was a kid. We'd often go to this cute restaurant for breakfast that had blueberry muffins and milk served in mugs shaped like cows. (But that's a whole different story.)
There's two things I look for in a great blueberry muffin: lots of blueberries and a firm consistency to the muffin for spreading butter on. My husband and I came up with this recipe, and it's made to our specifications: this recipe is a little less sweet than others, and has some healthy stuff (oat bran) to make my husband happy :)
Did you know...?
According to Wikipedia, the state of Maine produces 25% of all the lowbush blueberries in North America. It takes about 50,000 beehives to pollinate all the blueberry bushes in Maine. Michigan is the leader in highbush blueberry production. In 1998, Michigan produced about 490,000,000 pounds of blueberries, or 32% of all the blueberries eaten in the United States!
Awesomely Altered Blueberry Muffins
Other Alterations
The wonderful thing about this batter is that you can use it for a base, and change the other ingredients to make other types of muffins. Here are some other alterations or additions you can make to this recipe.
- add 1/2 cup of ripe, mashed bananas
- cut blueberries down to 1/2 cup and instead add 1/2 cup of cranberries, raspberries, and/or blackberries (1 cup total of berries)
- add the zest from 1 orange or lemon
- like nuts? add 1/4 cup of ground walnuts to Crunchy Topping mixture
- I love peanut butter in anything - try adding 2 tablespoons of creamy peanut butter to your muffin batter!
Ingredients for Muffins
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup oat bran
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 1/3 cup milk, (skim works fine)
- 1 cup fresh blueberries
Ingredients for Crunchy Topping (optional)
- 1/3 cup of white sugar
- a little less than 1/3 cup of all purpose flour
- a little less than 1/4 cup of softened butter
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (ground)
Baking Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Grease your muffin pan or use muffin cup liners.
- Combine 1 1/4 cups of flour, 1/4 cup of oat bran, 1/4 white sugar, and 1/4 cup of brown sugar in large mixing bowl.
- Put vegetable oil, egg, and milk in smaller bowl or cup. Mix wet mixture with dry ingredients.
- Gently fold blueberries into your batter. Fill muffin cups until 3/4 full with muffin batter.
- (Optional) Mix together Crunching Topping ingredients with fork until blended. This mixture should be crumbly.
- Sprinkle Crunchy Topping over muffin batter before baking.
- Bake muffins at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until done.
I hope you enjoy these muffins!! I certainly do!
Looking for more ideas?
Comments
i don't have oar bran. Can i use plain oats that i used for breakfast? Ground them or not required?Can i use powder milk? I prefer to use my kid's milk so that he can he the muffins. Voted up
Peru just started producing blueberries so I'm excited to try any and all blueberry recipes. This healthier version of blueberry muffins sounds delicious. Thanks!
- Author
Hi Peachpurple - I'm not overly familiar with the different types of oats out there, but I would think you could use instant oats instead of oat bran for this recipe. The texture might be a little different, but the more you can break down your instant oats, the more similar I think the recipe would be. As for powdered milk - if you normally cook with it, I would think it would work fine. You would need to add water as you normally do, so the milk will wet down the batter mixture. Hope this helps! Thanks!!
- Author
Hi Vespawolf - I love blueberries too! Hope you enjoy this recipe. Thanks for your comments!!
These muffins look just scrumptious... and blueberries with it...I love it! Thanks!
What vegetable oil do you use for muffins?
purl3agony, these sound great. I'll have to ask my wife to make them for me.
- Author
Hi kidscrafts - I usually use sunflower or canola oil. Walnut oil and almond oil are supposed to be healthier options, but I've used walnut oil and it's very greasy and has a strong kind of earthy taste. Hope this helps :) Thanks!!
- Author
Hey theframjak- This recipe is pretty easy. I'm sure you could make them yourself! Hope you enjoy them. Thanks for your comments!!
I usually use butter for pastry that's why I asked. Thanks for your answer!
- Author
No problem :) Thanks, as always!!
I saw these this morning when checking out your other hubs and ending up making them for breakfast. I didn't have oat bran and used regular oats (same ammount) like peachpurple had asked about. My batter was really thick like cookie dough almost... maybe the oats sucked up my moisture? Who knows. I ended up adding another 1/2 cup milk for consistency. They came out great! Thanks for this recipe. I used it in my food blog www.diyheather.com and credited your hub :)
- Author
Hi Heather - The oat bran looks like crushed oats so I can see how regular oats would probably require more liquid in the mixture. I'm glad it worked out for you :) I will check out your food blog and thanks for the mention! You rock :)
On a visit to Maine in 2010 we picked blueberries up near Belfast and made muffins at a friend's house. We got to learn just how popular blueberry harvest is up there!
Your recipe is great plus you've provided alternative versions - useful. I love muffins with Greek yoghurt.
Votes and a share for this recipe.
- Author
Thanks chef-de-jour! I still love this blueberry muffin recipe. So glad you like it too! Maine is one of my favorite vacation spots. I'm glad you have good memories from your trip. Thanks so much for reading, commenting, and sharing!
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