Vegan Blueberry Muffins

Light and fluffy, with mild sweetness, sky-high crowns, and bursts of blueberry throughout, this recipe is the platonic ideal of a blueberry muffin. An optional streusel topping elevates these muffins to a decadent experience to rival any bakery.

As per usual, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. My Darling Vegan’s base recipe has been my go-to blueberry muffin recipe for years, but there were some tweaks I waned to get down on paper, and had never gotten around to until this past week when inspiration struck. I was at a western-style Asian bakery, and while waiting for my food, was staring at this brightly lit display of the most beautiful, brown-on-top blueberry muffins you’ve ever seen, in the usual larger-than-life style of Asian bakeries.

I knew the sky-high crowning and golden brown exteriors on these gorgeous specimens (which were not vegan, alas) was likely due in part to diastatic malt powder, a fairly common ingredient to bread bakers, but maybe a little more esoteric to everyday home bakers.

The result is the airiest, most tender muffin you’ve ever had, with just the slightest hint of malty flavor. In addition to the diastatic malt powder, I also like to incorporate my muse Stella Parks’ spice recommendation for blueberry muffins, ground coriander. She also recommends some nutmeg, but I generally forget to include it and have never noticed.

She also did some very useful tests in regards to the dreaded sinking of blueberries. Folk wisdom suggests that coating the blueberries in flour will keep the berries from sinking, but beyond this making no logical sense, it clearly doesn’t work. However, coating the berries in flour does inhibit them from exploding during baking which is very worth doing in my opinion. Her recommendation to keep berries from sinking to the bottom is to spoon a little batter into the bottom of your prepared pan(s) before you fold the berries into the batter, creating a batter cushion. This works really well, though I don’t always do it myself!

Recipe

Scalable Version of Recipe: Blueberry Muffins
Make a copy (File > Make a Copy) to get a version of the recipe that can easily be scaled for different batch sizes and form factors (loaf, Bundt, etc.)

Yields: 1 dozen muffins (90 g each)
Servings: 12
Active Time: 10 minutes
Bake Time: 25 minutes
Passive Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

Clabbered Milk

240 g Unsweetened Plain Vegan Milk, Cool room temp
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar ( 4 g )

Dry

270 g All Purpose Flour
2.5 tsp Baking Powder ( 10 g )
1.5 tsp Diastatic Malt Power ( 6 g ), Optional, See notes
0.5 tsp Kosher Salt ( 2 g ), Table Salt: 1/2 volume, same weight
0.25 tsp Baking Soda ( 1 g )
0.25 tsp Ground Coriander ( 1 g ), Optional, See notes

Wet

130 g Sugar
85 g Neutral Oil
1 tsp Vanilla Extract ( 4 g )

200 g Fresh Blueberries, Coated in flour to inhibit exploding (optional)

Optional: Streusel Topping

42 g Vegan Butter, Melted
75 g All Purpose Flour
45 g Light Brown Sugar
30 g Sugar
0.25 tsp Kosher Salt ( 1 g )
1 pinch Ground Coriander, Optional

Notes

Diastatic Malt Powder: aids in browning, texture, and crumb, but isn’t necessary

Ground Coriander: is complementary to the flavor of blueberries, but isn’t necessary

Store muffins in an airtight container at room temp for up to a week.

Method

Oven: 190C | 375F, middle rack. Grease or line pan(s)

Mix together clabbered milk ingredients. Set aside

In medium bowl, thoroughly whisk together dry ingredients. Set aside

In large bowl or bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle, beat wet ingredients on medium for 2 minutes

With mixer running on low, add the dry mixture in alternating portions with the milk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry mixture

Optional if you don’t want blueberries on bottom of cupcakes: spoon a little batter into the bottom(s) of your prepared pan(s)

Add blueberries to batter and stir until just combined

If doing: In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the streusel ingredients

Spoon batter into prepared liners/pan

If doing: Sprinkle streusel on top

Bake for 22 to 25 mins, until muffins are golden and slightly shiny on top

Inserted tester should come out clean, or with only a few crumbs

Remove to rack to cool. Allow to sit in pan for 10 minutes before demolding

Inspiration

Vegan Blueberry Muffins – My Darling Vegan
Changes to original recipe:
Organizational:
-Broke ingredients into buckets
-Rewrote the instructions and used a different method of ingredient combination. Even though this recipe uses unsaturated fat and doesn’t rely on mechanical leavening (ie, no creaming together butter and sugar), I have found that this recipe can come out a little unpleasantly oily/dense if the fat and sugar aren’t homogenized well, hence the changes I made
Ingredients:
-Swapped from soy milk to any vegan milk (have tested this recipe with multiple milks, an have found no noticeable difference between them, though I do generally use soy milk)
-Added Diastatic Malt Powder for more browning, rising, lighter crumb
-Added Ground Coriander per Stella Parks’ recommendation
-Swapped canola oil to any neutral oil (have tested this recipe with multiple oils and have found no noticeable difference in texture)
-Omitted lemon zest. I like lemons and blueberries, but just don’t care about it in blueberry muffins
-Added an ingredient list and method for streusel because it’s nice to have that info + the muffin recipe in one place