Simple Blueberry Muffins – vegan and easy

If you are looking for simple, easy yet super tasty muffins to bake at home, you have come to the right place, these vegan blueberry muffins tick all the boxes – they are my favourite easy, simple and quick to bake recipe, full of juicy blueberries and so delicious. They are great for breakfast or a gift for your friends and family or take to home parties.

*This post may contain affiliate links. For full disclosure visit our Affiliate Disclosure page.

Baking is a fun activity, especially these days as we spend most of our time at home. I sometimes get frustrated about the restriction and I imagine all of you who are reading this feel the same way. So why not bake something fun, easy, and delicious like these vegan blueberry muffins? Are you in? Yes!

If you love my vegan raspberry muffins, or lemon blueberry loaf cake, you will love this recipe too. They are dead-easy to make yet super delicious to eat with lots of juicy and delicious blueberries, my friends approved immediately after the first bite!

The simplest vegan muffin

I baked these muffins for breakfast on Halloween morning last year. I love baking and creating new recipes, however I appreciate easy and quick recipes to bake in the morning right when I wake up because I’m just not patient enough to go through long recipe steps or wait for them to bake or cook for a long time!

I had a plan to attend a little Halloween party gathering with friends that evening, of course with covid measures and the party was held outside for better ventilation and to keep distance from each other. And I had a little preparation for my easy to put together a costume for Mary Poppins so I needed time for it but I also needed time for good breakfast.

So I baked them for breakfast, ate 2 of them and packed the rest in paper bags to take with me for my friends and still had plenty of time to prepare for my Mary Poppins outfit! My point is, these blueberry muffins are super simple, easy and quick to bake even in the busy morning with other chores to do. So it’s perfect for working professionals who are like me with a busy work schedule but love to bake at weekends, or busy mums with kids. I’m pretty sure that your kids will love them and that they enjoy making them too! What a great home activity with kids.

How to make these simple blueberry muffins

Making this recipe is simple. All you need is the muffin batter and a cup full of fresh blueberries. I have made blueberry muffins with streusel toppings and they are so delicious too, but today we are making the simplest, because who doesn’t like an easy recipe to bake at home? But stay tuned for my other muffin recipes with streusel too!

Muffins are one of my absolute favourite to bake because they are relatively easy and quick to make. The first time I baked my own muffins I was almost shocked how easy it was to bake them! If you haven’t baked muffins before, don’t worry! You can bake your own lovely muffins too with a little tips. Here’s what you need and useful tips.

Plain flour and white sugar

For this simple vegan blueberry muffin recipe, I used plain white flour and sugar to make it simple for you to bake at home. If you want to make it a little healthier, use organic cane sugar that is less processed than white sugar instead, it works perfectly for this recipe too.

You can also replace it with wholemeal flour and other sugars such as brown sugar, coconut sugar, etc. if desired, but using plain white flour and sugar makes it simple and easy for you to make at home as most supermarkets have them at all times.

Also plain flour tends to raise higher than wholemeal flour which makes that perfect tall muffins top, so if you are new to muffin baking plain flour is a good choice to make!

Melted vegan butter

Melted vegan butter adds a lovely buttery flavour to the mufins. One of the brands I use is Earth Balance, their vegan buttery spread or vegan buttery sticks are perfect to make this recipe. Another good buttery spread to use is Vitalite dairy-free spread, I used this when I was baking in London and they do a good job too.

One of the things that makes this recipe so simple is the melted vegan butter. It makes it easy to mix and blend with dry ingredients with less effort than whipping up the vegan butter with an electric mixer.

You can also use vegetable oil instead of melted vegan butter if preferred, but I recommend you to use vegan butter as I like the buttery flavour in this recipe.

Butter milk

Buttermilk is not a kind of milk with butter melted in it but it’s fermented acidic milk. It doesn’t sound nice eh? Never mind adding them in baking! I thought that too but it actually does wonders to your muffins or any baking goods! The acidity of buttermilk relaxes gluten developed in the batter which creates soft and fluffy muffins.

We are using soy milk and apple cider vinegar to make vegan butter milk to achieve that lovely texture. Simply mix a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and soy milk and leave for 2-3 mins to let it curdle and voila, we have our own vegan butter milk ready to use.

You can also use other plant milks if you like, such as almond milk or oat milk. They don’t curdle as much as soy milk but it’ll do as an amazing job.

Mix gently and no over mixing

It is tempting to mix the batter with an electric mixer until completely smooth, but this is not a good idea when it comes to baking. Over mixing the batter develops gluten too much and will result in tough texture. It also prevents muffins from raising tall.

When you mix the batter, mix gently with a large wooden spoon with a cutting motion from top to bottom until the dry and wet ingredients are just combined. This will create the minimum amount of gluten which is what we want. Don’t worry about leaving little lumps of flour in the batter, it will disappear when the muffins are in the oven!

Resting the batter

Resting the batter for a good 20 mins before baking makes a huge difference in the texture of the final product and making the perfect tall muffin tops! Like using butter milk and mixing the batter gently, resting the batter relaxes gluten in the batter thus making soft and fluffy texture as well as that nice tall muffin top.

Rest your batter for at least 15-20 mins at room temperature before you scoop it into each muffin cups. Make sure to cover the bowl with the batter in it with a dampened kitchen cloth so that the batter won’t go dry and to keep any dust from getting into the batter while resting.

However, if you don’t have time to rest the batter you can bake them without resting too!

Q and A

How can I make them gluten-free?

You can make these lovely vegan blueberry muffins gluten-free too by replacing the plain flour with 1:1 gluten-free flour! My favourite to bake gluten-free goods is this Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 gluten-free flour. It is a very fine flour and make lovely gluten-free baking goods. If you love gluten-free muffins you will love my gluten-free lemon muffins too!

Can I use frozen blueberries instead of fresh ones?

Yes, you can! I prefer to use fresh blueberries in my recipe but if you only have frozen blueberries they can be used in this recipe too. Frozen blueberries tend to sink to the bottom of the muffins when baked in the oven, which I personally don’t favour as I want juicy blueberries in my mouth at every bite I take.

So to prevent frozen blueberries from sinking to the bottom of the muffins, toss and lightly coat them in flour before folding them into the muffin batter. By adding this little step when using frozen blueberries, it prevents them from sinking, so that you have blueberries spread equally in the muffins.

What kind of blueberries should I use?

I use fresh, regular-sized blueberries for this vegan blueberry muffin recipe. As I said earlier you can also use frozen blueberries too. See the above section “Can I use frozen blueberries for this vegan blueberry muffin recipe?” for a tip to use frozen blueberries! You can also use jumbo size blueberries too for this recipe, in which case you can throw more than a cup of blueberries due to their size. I reckon a good one cup and a half to 2 cups would be good!

How to store them

You can keep them nice and fresh at room temperature for 2-3 days. Put them in an airtight container for maximum freshness. You can also freeze them for a longer shelf life too. After baking, let them cool completely, put them in a freezer friendly airtight container, and store them in the freezer for up to 2-3 months. To serve warm them up in a microwave or bake on low heat for 5-6 mins until they are soft and fluffy again.

You will LOVE these vegan blueberry muffins because they are:

– simple and easy to make
– soft, fluffy and delicious
– vegan
– great breakfast
– lovely as a gift to home parties

Please leave a comment and rate this recipe in the comment section below if you like these vegan blueberry muffins! Let me know and tag me @thechestnutbakery on Instagram too. Thank you for making my recipe, friends!

Print

Useful kitchen tools for this recipe

Muffin tin