20 Healthy Muffin Recipes to Start Your Day Right

Blueberry Swirl Muffins

Ever order a blueberry muffin only to learn it has fewer than 5 berries? These muffins will make up for those disappointments and then some.

Yes, they look stunning thanks to the generous helping of blueberries. But take a bite into this beautiful muffin, and you’ll also find a swirl of thick blueberry sauce in the center. Then, although they’re delicious without, these blueberry muffins are finished with a classic streusel topping.

Ingredients

Maple Spice Glazed Pumpkin Muffins

These muffins are good even without the glaze, but when you’re celebrating the start of fall, why not go all out?

The glaze uses almond milk, which can be replaced with dairy if it fits into your diet. Either way, these will need to be stored in an airtight container in the fridge so that the glaze stays in place. They’ll keep for up to 5 days, or can be stashed in the freezer for a couple months.

Ingredients

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

To make these healthy lemon muffins, you can forget the wheat flour. Instead, combine vanilla protein powder and coconut flour for a paleo-friendly replacement.

Once you fall in love with the final result, you can switch it up to make more gluten-free muffins. Fold in your favorite fruit, chocolate chips, or seeds. You can also swap out the yogurt for nut butter for a slightly different flavor.

Ingredients

Spelt Strawberry Muffins

The nutritional content of wheat and spelt is shockingly similar. There are slightly less calories per cup in spelt flour, which gives it fewer grams of carbs and protein than whet. And though they have the same amount of fat, spelt contains more omega-3s and omega-6s.

For flavors – and to reap the rewards of both – this recipe replaces half the all-purpose flour in muffin recipe with spelt. That helps them stay fluffy, so you won’t end up with hockey puck muffins.

Ingredients

Raspberry Coffee Cake Muffins

Think you’ve tried every kind of muffin around? Well these raspberry muffins have a secret.

You could call them coffee cake, especially with the streusel, but they aren’t like other coffee cake around. That’s because they don’t just go well with a cup of coffee – they have real coffee in them. Coffee grounds are an ingredient in the batter as well as the topping.

Ingredients

Plain Muffins

This recipe can be enjoyed alone as a way to highlight your favorite spread. Or, you can make this batter and then fold in the mix-ins of your choice. Anything that sounds good to you goes.

Common options include fruit, seeds, chopped nuts, or chocolate chips. But you can also take this in a savory direction with cheese, fresh herbs, and your favorite seasoning. Depending on how much you integrate, the recipe may make more muffins.

Ingredients

Healthy Jelly Doughnut Muffins

Next time you get a craving for jelly doughnuts, you’ll be happy to have this recipe on file.

The plain muffin has a soft, tender crumb to satisfy cravings for cakey doughnuts. And the middle is filled with the jelly of your choice, such as strawberry, raspberry, or even lemon curd. To seal the deal, the finished muffins take a dunk in butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

Ingredients

Homemade English Muffins

To bake bread from scratch at home, you usually need yeast. Yet, what you don’t need is to turn on the oven. You’ll still need a source of heat, though, because raw bread wouldn’t work out too well.

Rather than baking in the oven, these English muffins can be cooked up on a hot griddle or skillet.

Ingredients

Almond Butter Banana Nut Muffins

If you have a favorite banana bread recipe, you can always use that to make muffins. On the other hand, you can start with a banana-based batter and build it into something new.

These oat muffins do have a bunch of bananas (ok, more like half a bunch), but that’s not all. They’re also loaded with almond butter, chocolate chips, and pecans.

Ingredients

Cottage Cheese & Egg Muffins with Ham

Muffins don’t have to be sweet. This recipe still relies on flour and eggs, but rather than using butter or oil, this batter is made with cottage cheese – with a bit of cheddar for good measure. But as amazing as these look, you’ll be surprised at how incredible easy they are to make.

Mix the 8 ingredients together, and divide between the cups of the muffin tin. Bake for a half hour, and devour. Any leftovers will freeze beautifully.

Ingredients

Whole-Grain Cinnamon Apple Muffins

Streusel muffins are topped with butter and brown sugar, but that doesn’t necessarily make them unhealthy. Indulgent, yes, but if you sneak in a few nutritious ingredients, these can be a wholesome breakfast.

To compensate for the sugar on top, the muffin batter only calls for a minimal amount of honey. The rest of the sweetness comes from diced apples.

Ingredients

Peanut Butter Protein Muffins

If you want to make protein-packed muffins, it makes sense to use peanut butter. But why stop there?

There are a few more steps you can take to boost the protein content. Cut the fat of egg yolks and replace them with egg whites. Substitute most of the flour for protein powder. And, last but not least, PB2 adds tons of peanut flavor without the fat.

Ingredients

Jalapeno Corn Muffins

Regular cornbread not delivering enough corn flavor? Bake these muffins, which include whole corn kernels as well as cornmeal. With all that flavor, you don’t need the jalapeno unless you prefer the kick.

And since this recipe doesn’t use eggs, you can make vegan muffins by using non-dairy milk and choosing oil instead of butter.

Ingredients

Chai Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins

There are endless ways to make oat muffins, such as the classic combo of cinnamon and raisins. However, it’s also possible to take things in an unexpected direction, such as infusing them with the flavor of chai.

First, brew a bag of your favorite spiced tea. Then, combine the remaining ingredients as usual, making one wet mixture, one dry, before gently stirring the two together. From there, the rest is a piece of cake – or a bite of a chai muffin.

Ingredients

Taco Cornbread Muffins

Plain cornbread can make some entrées, like spicy chili and braised ribs, even better. But if you mix even more ingredients into the batter, cornbread can become a tasty snack all on its own.

Cheddar cheese is a common addition to cornbread, and this recipe also has added flavor with Mexican spices and salsa. To complete the taste of a taco, this cornbread has an unexpected ingredient: ground beef.

Ingredients

Double Chocolate Black Bean Muffins

Not everyone is on board with making baked goods out of beans. Yet when you make these chocolate muffins, nobody will be able to discern the secret ingredient. There’s nothing about the texture or flavor to give these muffins away, especially when there are chocolate chips to melt in your mouth. And instead of eggs, these chocolate black bean muffins rely on chia seeds.

Ingredients

Goat Cheese Muffins with Black Olives

These savory muffins are rustic, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t impressive looking and tasting.

Black olives totally transform when baked, taking on a mellower flavor. While the baked black olive muffins share tasting notes similar to high-quality olive oil, they take it to a whole other level while giving you something to sink your teeth into.

Ingredients

Blue Sky Bran Muffins

Bran muffins don’t have to be dry, flavorless, and only good to eat when slathered in butter.

Since these are studded with fruit – anything on hand, from strawberries to cherries, pineapple to oranges – these muffins are moist and full of flavor. And that’s not the only way that the recipe is adaptable. If you don’t have buttermilk, substitute kefir or sour cream.

Ingredients

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins

Compared to carrots, zucchini blend into baked goods a little better. The softer texture helps the veggie disguise itself in the muffins, and the milder flavor adds a little something without being too savory or too sweet.

These are also gluten-free muffins, using a combination of oat flour and cashew meal to avoid wheat.

Ingredients

Carrot Muffins

These muffins taste just like carrot cake – but healthier!

You could even decorate the top with cream cheese icing, and no one will know these tender muffins aren’t technically cupcakes. While muffins are easy to mix together, a cake batter tends to start by creaming together butter and sugar. The difference in the two baking methods affects the texture. Muffins tend to have a coarse crumb, and cakes end up being a bit finer.

Ingredients