Bakery-Style Blueberry Muffins with Streusel Topping

These golden-brown muffins studded with blueberries and finished with a cinnamon streusel topping are out of this world. 

A must in any baker’s repertoire is muffins, alongside chocolate chip cookies [1] and chocolate cake [2]. So today’s recipe is one for the books.

bakery-style blueberry muffins

I’ve been making these muffins probably since as long as I’ve been baking, and I wanted to share my version of the original [3] with you.

Over the years, here’s what I’ve learned about making this muffin recipe.

Playing Around

  1. You can really play with the fat. The original recipe calls for vegetable oil. You can easily replace this with coconut oil, olive oil or melted butter if you like.
  2. Milk. You can use regular 2% or whole milk if you like, I use buttermilk when I can find it, or a combination of milk and a little vinegar. You can also try a non-dairy milk if you prefer.
  3. Sugar. Use brown if you like.
  4. Blueberries. Use those big, American-style ones (American blueberries is what they are called in Poland, is that universal?)
  5. Additions. In place of blueberries, try chocolate chips, raspberries, banana chunks- you can really get creative here.
  6. Streusel. Not necessary per se, but takes these muffins to the next level.

bakery-style blueberry muffins

My add-ins

I’ve flavoured these muffins with lemon zest and cardamom.

The lemon zest adds freshness and works really well with the blueberries.

Cardamom is a popular spice in Indian food and Indian desserts, If you like flavours like cinnamon and nutmeg, you might like to experiment with cardamom, it’s a sweet-smelling spice that is warm, just like the latter two. I added cardamom to the muffin batter, but you can also add it to the crumb topping.

I like to think of these muffins as bakery-style, because I would pay good money for one of these to accompany my morning coffee.

blueberry muffins

Hope you give this blueberry muffin recipe a try, let me know what you think!

bakery-style blueberry muffins

Print Recipe [4]

Bakery-Style Blueberry Muffins

Yield: 12

Cook Time: 25 min

Total Time: 45 min

Ingredients:

For the muffins:

  • 210 g (1-1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
  • 135 g (3/4 cup) sugar (brown or white)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 tsp lemon zest (optional)
  • ½ tsp ground cardamom (optional)
  • 80 mL (1/3 cup) vegetable oil
  • 80 mL (1/3) buttermilk, regular milk also works fine
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 200 g (1 cup) blueberries

For the streusel crumb topping:

  • 70 g (1/2 cup) flour
  • 70 g (1/3 cup) sugar (brown or white are both fine)
  • 50 g ¼ cup butter
  • 70 g (1/2 cup) handful of pecans (optional)
  • 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 200 C or 375 F and line a cupcake tray with 12 paper liners (the video shows 6 but I made two batches since I only had a 6 cup tray).
  2. To make the muffin batter, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cardamom and lemon zest stirring till combined. The cardamom and lemon zest aren't necessary per se, but try it out, they really add new depths of flavour to this recipe.
  3. Make a well in the centre of the mixture and add in the wet ingredients: one large egg, buttermilk/milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract.
  4. Stir everything till just combined, the mixture will be quite thick.
  5. The last addition to the muffin recipe is blueberries. Gently fold them in. Note that you can substitute blueberries with other fruits like raspberries, peach chunks, apple chunks etc.
  6. To make the crumb topping, stir together the flour, sugar, cinnamon and chopped nuts. Mix in the butter, using a spoon or your fingers (much easier). The mixture should resemble the likes of a cookie dough.
  7. To assemble the muffins, fill each liner around 2/3 of the way full with the muffin batter. These make 12 in total, make sure that each muffin as a good amount of blueberries.
  8. Next, distribute the streusel topping evenly between the muffins, crumbling it slightly with your fingertips. I do around 1-1/2 tbsp of the mixture per muffin.
  9. Bake the muffins for 20-25 min or until they develop a beautiful golden colour, and when you insert a toothpick it comes out clean. Just make sure not to pierce a blueberry.
  10. Let them cool slightly before eating, but we all know that a warm blueberry muffin – maybe with a nice cup of coffee, is the perfect way to start your morning.
  11. These will last up to a week stored properly in an airtight container, but taste best fresh.
Loosely adapted from Allrecipes.com [3], note that there are quite a few discrepancies between the original version and my version (i.e. in my version the streusel topping has less sugar and more flour). 

bakery-style blueberry muffins

Are you a fan of blueberries? Here’s some more blueberry inspiration:

Blueberry Brownie Cheesecake [5]

This blueberry brownie cheesecake is one of my my favourite birthday cake recipes.

Blueberry Brownie Cheesecake [5]

Fluffy and Healthy Whole Wheat Blueberry Pancakes [6]

And for something a little healthier, check out these blueberry pancakes [6]. An old recipe, but one that I refer back to often.

[6]

This delicious recipe brought to you by Hot Chocolate Hits
https://www.hotchocolatehits.com/2020/08/bakery-style-blueberry-muffins-with-streusel-topping.html/

URLs in this post:

[1] chocolate chip cookies: https://www.hotchocolatehits.com/2015/05/salted-chocolate-chip-cookies.html/

[2] chocolate cake: https://www.hotchocolatehits.com/2019/01/best-vegan-chocolate-cake-ii.html/

[3] the original: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6865/to-die-for-blueberry-muffins/

[4] Print Recipe: https://www.hotchocolatehits.com/2020/08/bakery-style-blueberry-muffins-with-streusel-topping.html/print/

[5] Blueberry Brownie Cheesecake: https://www.hotchocolatehits.com/2020/06/blueberry-brownie-cheesecake.html/

[6] Fluffy and Healthy Whole Wheat Blueberry Pancakes: https://www.hotchocolatehits.com/2015/03/healthy-whole-wheat-blueberry-pancakes.html/