This easy recipe yields a dozen of the softest, fluffiest, most deliciously buttery blueberry muffins. Topped with a crunchy cinnamon brown sugar streusel, these rival any bakery muffin, but come together quickly in your own kitchen. They’re prepared with simple ingredients, so you can be biting into a fresh, warm blueberry muffin in under an hour.
I originally published this recipe in 2014 and have since added new photos and helpful success tips.
Muffins are a perennial favorite because they’re quick and easy to make and the flavors are endless (just like scones). Everyone appreciates a fresh batch of muffins and, best of all, muffins double as breakfast and snack. (Or in the case of double chocolate muffins… dessert!)
But when it comes to muffin varieties, blueberry muffins hold the crown. Nothing compares to the classic blueberry muffin, and today I’m showing you exactly how to prepare my very best version.
This is my family’s favorite blueberry muffins recipe, and going by the hundreds of 5-star reviews it’s received, it’s a family favorite for many other home bakers, too!
One reader, Jes, commented: “Best blueberry muffins I have ever had—no bakery or store or restaurant that I’ve ever visited has ever produced a blueberry muffin that could compare to this. ★★★★★“
Another reader, Sara, commented: “Best blueberry muffins I have ever had in my 80 years! ★★★★★”
And another reader, Kathy, commented: “This truly is my favorite blueberry muffin recipe. You just can’t go wrong with it. Everyone loves the streusel topping. ★★★★★“
Why Are These Our Favorite Blueberry Muffins?
They’re a texture lover’s dream with a buttery soft crumb, juicy blueberries, and a sweet crunch on top. They’re not as large and dense as my jumbo blueberry muffins and have a little more flavor from the brown sugar and butter.
These muffins stand out from the rest because they’re:
- Buttery and moist
- Soft and cakey, not dense
- Easy to prepare
- Made with EXTRA blueberries (and you can use fresh or frozen)
- Topped with an easy 3-ingredient sweet streusel
Since I first developed this blueberry muffin recipe, I’ve baked dozens of variations—swapping blueberries for apples, peaches, and other fruits. In fact, this blueberry muffin recipe quickly turned into my go-to base muffin recipe, a batter you can turn into infinite muffin flavors. I also have the recipe in my newest cookbook, Sally’s Baking 101.
How to Make the Best Blueberry Muffins
There are no secret ingredients or complicated steps in this blueberry muffin recipe. You only need a few bowls and a mixer… and a muffin pan, of course!
- Whisk the dry ingredients: Flour, leaveners, and salt.
- Mix the wet ingredients: Butter, sugars, eggs, sour cream, and vanilla.
- Combine wet & dry, then add milk: You can use any type of milk, dairy or nondairy, or even buttermilk (see Notes).
- Spoon into muffin pan: Fill those liners all the way to the top!
- Add streusel topping: Just brown sugar, cinnamon, and chopped walnuts. See below for suggested alternatives.
- Bake!
That’s it! The sour cream is the magical ingredient because it adds so much moisture and produces the softest blueberry muffins ever. If you don’t have sour cream, you can use yogurt like we do in lemon blueberry muffins. Or you can use buttermilk to replace both the milk and the sour cream.
How to Create the Perfect Tall Muffin Tops
For tall bakery-style domed muffin tops, there are 3 directions to follow closely:
- Make sure your muffin batter is THICK. (This one is!)
- Fill your muffin tins/liners all the way to the top.
- Bake the muffins for 5 minutes at a high temperature, and then lower the temperature while keeping the oven door closed. This initial high oven temperature quickly lifts up the muffin top. Once the temperature is reduced, the centers of the muffins bake. I recommend this in nearly all of my muffin recipes. (These crumb cake muffins are an exception to the rule!)
Have I mentioned what a treat these are with a swipe of homemade honey butter, too? Cinnamon butter is also an amazing pairing with these muffins!
It depends on the recipe. My team and I wouldn’t consider these healthy blueberry muffins because they’re made with butter, flour, and sugar. However, they’re homemade and you know exactly what’s in them, vs. something store-bought. If you are looking for a healthier alternative, you’ll appreciate these blueberry banana muffins, bran muffins, or applesauce muffins.
Absolutely. You can simply omit the nuts, or swap the streusel here for the crumb topping from this recipe for peach streusel muffins. Or skip the streusel topping entirely, and just top the muffins with some coarse sparkling sugar for a sweet crunch that’s also pretty!
Yes! If using frozen blueberries, do not thaw them before adding to the batter.
You can toss the blueberries with a Tablespoon of flour before you add them to the batter, but it’s not really necessary here because the muffin batter is so thick.
How to Freeze Blueberry Muffins
You can freeze the muffins for up to 3 months. Cool completely and then place the muffins in a freezer-friendly container or bag. When ready to eat, thaw in the refrigerator (overnight) or at room temperature on the counter. To warm up, microwave the thawed muffins for about 20 seconds or bake at 300°F (149°C) for 6–10 minutes.
Blueberry Muffin Variations
- Blueberry Muffin Cookies
- Blueberry Muffin Bread
- Lemon Blueberry Muffins
- Sparkling Jumbo Blueberry Muffins
- Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins
- Blueberry Almond Power Muffins
- Healthy Blueberry Banana Muffins
Favorite Breakfast Recipes
- Breakfast Casserole (so easy!)
- Homemade Bagels & Homemade English Muffins
- Perfect Homemade Quiche
- Cinnamon Rolls
- Scones Recipe
My Best Blueberry Muffins
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 12 muffins
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These blueberry muffins are buttery, soft, and moist. For that bakery-style goodness, add an easy cinnamon brown sugar topping. This thick muffin batter combined with my initial high oven temperature trick guarantees tall muffin tops. Prepared with basic ingredients and a couple mixing bowls, you’ll appreciate this easy breakfast recipe.
Ingredients
Topping
- 1/2 cup (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (67g) chopped walnuts (or pecans)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Muffins
- 1 and 3/4 cups (219g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup (50g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (120g) sour cream or plain/vanilla yogurt, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup (60ml) milk, at room temperature
- 1 and 1/2 cups (210g) fresh or frozen blueberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F (218°C). Spray a 12-count muffin pan with nonstick spray or use muffin liners. Set aside.
- For the topping: Mix all of the topping ingredients together. Set aside.
- For the muffins: Whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.
- Using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, beat the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together on high speed until smooth and creamy, about 3 minutes. (Here’s a helpful tutorial if you need guidance on how to cream butter and sugar.) On medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the sour cream and vanilla extract on medium speed until combined. With the mixer running on low speed, add the dry ingredients and milk into the wet ingredients and beat until combined. Batter is thick and creamy. Fold in the blueberries.
- Spoon the batter into liners, filling them all the way to the top. Spoon brown sugar topping on each, gently pressing it down into the surface so it sticks. Bake for 5 minutes at 425 then, keeping the muffins in the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (177°C). Bake for an additional 18–20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The total time these muffins take in the oven is about 23–25 minutes, give or take. Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes in the muffin pan, then transfer to a wire rack to continue cooling.
- Muffins stay fresh covered at room temperature for a few days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Freezing Instructions: Freeze baked & cooled muffins for up to 3 months. Thaw in the refrigerator or at room temperature before enjoying.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): 12-count Muffin Pan | Muffin Liners | Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Cooling Rack
- Sour Cream: Sour cream adds so much moisture. Plain yogurt is a great substitute—I recommend plain Greek yogurt, any fat content. Unsweetened applesauce or mashed banana may also be used.
- Milk: You can use any milk, dairy or nondairy. I recommend avoiding nonfat milk, however.
- Can I Use Buttermilk? Yes, you can use buttermilk in this recipe. Use it to replace BOTH the sour cream and milk. Use 3/4 cup (180ml).
- Blueberries: If using frozen blueberries, do not thaw.
- Can I Make the Streusel Without Nuts? Yes! You can simply omit the nuts, or swap the streusel here for the crumb topping from this recipe for peach streusel muffins. Or skip the streusel topping entirely, and just top the muffins with some coarse sparkling sugar for a sweet crunch that’s also pretty!
- Why the initial high oven temperature? As instructed, bake the muffins for 5 minutes at an initial high temperature, then lower it. This initial high oven temperature quickly lifts up and sets the tall muffin top. Once the temperature is lowered, the centers of the muffins bake. I do this in all my muffin recipes including zucchini muffins, lemon poppy seed muffins, and banana muffins, too.
- Jumbo & Mini Muffins: For a jumbo muffin pan: 425°F for 5 minutes, then reduce to 350°F for 22–25 minutes for a total of 27–30 minutes. Makes about 6. For mini muffins: 350°F (whole time) for 12–14 minutes. Makes about 36–40.
- Quick Bread: Here is my blueberry muffin bread, which is essentially the same recipe in a loaf pan.
- Why is everything at room temperature? All refrigerated ingredients should be at room temperature so the batter mixes together easily and evenly.
Reader Comments and Reviews
Loved baking these for my wife and our grandkids. I’m going to substitute with bananas next time but our grandkids want more blueberry muffins!
My family loves these muffins so much!!!! I made them so much I ran out of flour. I had to get creative so I used about a cup of pancake mix and a quarter of AP flour. I added a bit of baking flour to the mixture, used whipping cream instead of milk. For everything else I had to use measurements that I felt would give me my desired consistency . They came out perfect !!!!!! No one new the difference . You’re God sent for this recipe
Very tasty next time maybe I will try half amount of blueberrys as muffins had so many they went down well thou thank you
Help, Sally? I gave this recipe 5 stars because they taste great, and I KNOW it’s a good recipe, but mine did not rise. :-(. Kudos to you too, for the ratio of sugar to flour! Most American cake-like recipes are sickeningly sweet, and I typically cut 1/3 to 1/2 the sugar. But not your recipe! Anyway, I followed the recipe exactly, and the batter was not dense when I put it in the pan, but the muffins did not rise past the top of the cups. I’m baking at 7000 feet elevation, and I used a stoneware muffin “tin”. Do you think the stoneware heats up too slowly, so that initial high temp didn’t work?
Hi Sophie, so glad you tried these! It’s likely the elevation. I have zero experience baking at high altitude, but a lot of readers have found this chart helpful: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/resources/high-altitude-baking
Stoneware definitely bakes a lot slower, so I would extend the bake time by a couple minutes.
I very rarely leave reviews, but these are the best blueberry muffins I have ever made. I did not change a thing. I was afraid they would be too sweet with the topping, but the muffin itself is not too sweet so it’s just right. The addition of the cinnamon and the walnuts is so good. This is now my go to blueberry muffin recipe. Thanks for sharing!
Excellent recipe! I followed it exactly and they came out perfectly, rise and flavor. I recommend coating blueberries (fresh) lightly with flour, which prevents them from all sinking to the bottom. Note: make half the amount of streusel, if that – I’m now trying to figure out how to use up the remaining! For people with issues getting a proper rise: baking soda/powder should be 6 months old or less and, as indicated in the recipe, all wet ingredients should be room temperature.
Hey sally..i love your recipes.am from Uganda(africa) and blue berries are scarce now due to the pandemic since they are imported and very expensive..would like to know whether I can add blue berry extract and a few blueberries( not the quantity that is in recipe)
Thanks
I’m new to baking but thought I’d give it try as a way to keep busy during the pandemic. This recipe was easy to follow and the results were outstanding. My wife loved them!
These are so amazing! I tried them two days ago and my family and I ate it all in just 15 minutes!
Thank you Sally for this delicious recipe!
Great recipe! Honestly the best blueberry muffins I’ve ever had!
Just was wondering if I could make the batter the night before and then make them in the morning?
Thanks for your help.
Hi Kim, thrilled you enjoyed these muffins! You could mix the dry ingredients together the night before, but wait to add the wet ingredients until you’re ready to bake them.
Love this recipe! The muffins didn’t last in my house! The streusel was a big hit for my kids. They helped me make them from start to finish even to transfer from pan to cooling rack they love this. Thank you for sharing!!
@sally
Great recipe! I will use it again. I’m not a fan of cinnamon with blueberries, but I do love using nutmeg with them!
These are amazing! My kids just love them and so do I. They are balanced; not too sweet. Thank you so much for all of the wonderful recipes, Sally! You have saved us during quarantine and the summer with fun, new things to try 🙂
Easy to follow instructions. No weird and hard to find ingredients and 100% delicious! These are probably the best homemade muffins I have ever made!
Just made these for the first time and wow! They are delicious. Got a nice tall domed top and lots of berries in every muffin. I do have one question though. I weighed out the ingredients, used standard muffin pans but I only got 10 muffins. Did I maybe overfill the cups? I took them up to the edge of each cup.
Hi Chris, We are so happy you enjoyed these so much! It’s possible that you simply filled yours up a bit more than ours.
Fabulous!
Best muffin recipe ever! So moist and tasty. I cut the streusel topping in half as this was more than enough to cover the muffins.
These are truly amazing! I made a batch to take to my family and had to make a second batch the next day because my children were obsessed. Thank you for such a delicious recipe. I ran out of sour cream and used 1/4 cup vanilla yogurt and 1/4 cup of blueberry yogurt and it turned out just as yummy.
We absolutely LOVE this recipe! Have made it many times. What is the purpose of the higher temp for the first 5 minutes though? These muffins are toddler approved!! Have made with both yogurt and sour cream and we do prefer the yogurt however. Thanks!
It’s to create the perfect tall muffins tops! The initial high oven temperature quickly lifts up the muffin top. Once the temperature is lowered, the centers of the muffins bake.
I split used vanilla yogurt and sour cream (1/4c each). This recipe is amazing! Thanks!!
I’m in my 60s and have made lots of muffins in my time. These are absolutely the most delicious ones I’ve ever baked!! Mine rose perfectly! Will be using more of Sally’s recipes!
I made your muffins and used fresh blueberries from my garden. They are the most scrumptious muffins ever!!My family can’t get enough!!
The muffins did not rise as they baked. I know my ingredients were fresh. They were most and flavorful. I liked the taste of the streusel topping. It made 36 muffins plus an additional 12 muffin tops. However since they didn’t rise, it was more like blueberry cookies instead of muffin tops.
You must have tripled the recipe? The recipe makes 12 regular sized muffins for me. Maybe you forgot to triple the baking powder/soda?
Hi , so I have made this recipe 10 times. Exactly as posted. It is foolproof. I am always annoyed by the folks that give it 5 stars and change 6 things. So, in reality, I made it 12 times and once I forgot the sour cream, and once I used yogurt. I also used raspberries, and blackberries in the same quantities as The blueberries called for in recipe. It is amazing! My family thinks they are the best muffins ever! My neighbor took a batch to her church leaders- everyone says they are amazing! You can not go wrong with this recipe! This is now my staple muffin recipe, also, I always used pecans in the streusel topping. I am getting requests up and down the street of my neighborhood for these muffins!
Great recipe! Easy to make and the flavour is amazing!
Sally, you are AMAZING!! Another awesome recipe! Thank you for creating this blog! For the past few years baking recipes off your blog and from your cookbooks have become my therapy. 🙂 All your recipes come out perfect!
So good!
These muffins are delicious; light but rich. I would place these in a contests up against those of a most famous bakery! They will be a favorite at our family breakfasts (or desserts!) Can you provide the caloric value as well as fiber, etc.? Thank you!
We are thrilled you enjoy them so much, Judith! I’m unsure of the nutritional info of this recipe, but there are many great online calculators like this one: https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp
I followed the recipe exactly as follows only doubled it and used plain yogurt they did rise quite nicely. I kept the heat as instructed and they look great. I used a large muffin tin and they took about 22 min at 350 And the 5 min at the higher temp, I would recommend trying This recipe it turned out great.
To make the streusel nut free, I substituted the walnuts for crumbled honey wheat pretzels and they turned out great! Friends even liked the pretzel topping better than the nuts.
These were fantastic! So moist and I love that they are not dense. They look like they came from a bakery!
I would have to agree! These are best blueberry muffins we’ve ever had. Pretty easy to make and the whole family devoured them. Another great recipe Sally, thank you!
Very simple and quite tasty. Have searched for years for a good recipe that I like and I have found it. My yield was closer to 18 or 20 regular muffins but my blueberries were very plump. This is a keeper recipe.