I’ve been baking for a while now. So maybe I was starting to get a bit full of myself. Who knows. But these vegan blueberry muffins came along to cut me back down to size.
I usually don’t have to test a recipe too many times before I get it right.
But these blueberry muffins humbled me I tell you! I had to make these no less than 6 times before I perfected the recipe.
They almost got the better of me! I ended up on facebook complaining bitterly that no matter what I did, all my blueberries sank to the bottom, so it looked like a cupcake on the top and a blueberry mash on the bottom! I was seriously unimpressed and about to throw the whole idea of blueberry muffins out the window!
And to add to the frustration I couldn’t find any recipes online that even mentioned this as a potential issue!
Luckily, I have some baking friends on facebook who came to the rescue. ‘Your batter is too wet’ said one, ‘You need a stiffer batter’ said another. And the penny dropped. AH!
So I increased the flour, switched the non-dairy milk for homemade vegan buttermilk (it’s a lot thicker), removed the liquid oil and replaced it with some solid coconut oil and a mashed banana and bingo bango there was my blueberry muffins! Perfectly moist, perfectly delicious but most importantly, with blueberries all the way through, not just a mash at the bottom!
Before my batter was stiff enough for these muffins, I tried everything to stop the blueberries from sinking, like rolling them in flour, putting them in only right at the end before going into the oven, putting in a lot of blueberries, putting in only a few blueberries, nothing made a jot of difference. It wasn’t about the blueberries of course.
Your batter needs to be thick, that is the key aspect.
I did pop a few blueberries directly on the top of the muffins before going in just to make sure that they would be visible on the top, I didn’t want the muffins to rise up past the blueberries and keep them hidden from above, I wanted to see those beautiful purple bits right at the top!
If you love muffins like I do, then definitely also check out my bran muffins and my banana bread muffins!
And truth be told my orange and walnut carrot cake cupcakes are a lot like frosted muffins too, so muffin enthusiasts will love them too!
The great thing about this recipe is I have gone through all the troubleshooting with the batter, so if you follow the directions you will absolutely not have to worry about all your blueberries sinking straight to the bottom!
You will love these blueberry muffins, they are:
- Easy
- Deliciously moist
- Packed with delicious blueberries
- Perfectly sweet
- Simply divine with or without vegan butter
These muffins are at their absolute best when eaten fresh the same day. But they can also be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days.
If you make these muffins let us know! Rate the recipe and let us know how they turned out.
And if you take any pics tag us #lovingitvegan on instagram so we can admire them!
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- 2 and ¼ cups (282g) All Purpose Flour
- 1 cup (200g) White Sugar
- 3 tsp Baking Powder
- ½ tsp Salt
- 1 cup (240ml) Vegan Homemade Buttermilk
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- ¼ cup (60g) Coconut Oil (Firm)
- 1 Banana (~100g) Mashed
- 4 oz (113g) Fresh Blueberries + more to add directly on top
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar, baking powder and salt.
- Prepare your vegan buttermilk by squeezing half a lemon into a measuring jug and then adding soy milk up to the 1 cup line. Allow to sit for a minute to curdle.
- Peel and mash the banana.
- Add the buttermilk, vanilla, firm coconut oil and mashed banana to the dry ingredients and whisk in with a hand whisk. The batter should be thick.
- Wash the blueberries and place into a bowl. Add 1 tsp of flour and mix with the blueberries to lightly coat all of them with flour. This, along with the thickness of the batter will prevent your blueberries from sinking.
- Add the blueberries to the batter and fold in gently.
- Spray a muffin tray with non-stick spray and then divide the batter evenly between the muffin partitions.
- Add a few extra blueberries directly to the top of each muffin (optional).
- Place into the oven and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the muffins comes out clean (or mostly, if the toothpick hits a blueberry it won't be entirely clean, but you should still get a sense of whether they are done or not)
- Allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing the muffins from the muffin tray.
They look so delicious! I would kill for something like this right now. Figuratively of course. Or…?
Unbelievably good!
I made them but the inside looks undercooked I don’t know what I did wrong.
They probably needed to cook a little longer. Ovens do tend to vary in temperature. It would probably be a good idea to use the toothpick method, insert a toothpick into the center of one of the muffins to determine if they are ready. The toothpick should come out clean, or at least very close. Because there are blueberries in the recipe, if the toothpick goes into one of those, it is not going to come out clean, but you should still get a sense of whether they are done or whether they need to cook a bit longer.