I have a bone to pick with recipes everywhere – the first step is almost always to prepare the pans and preheat the oven. This is all fine and dandy, if it only took 5 minutes to prepare all the ingredients and be oven-ready. Inevitably, if I preheat first thing, my oven starts beeping right when I’m mid-scoop or pour. I’m never ready before the oven preheats! It’s kind of like those Tasty or Buzzfeed videos on Facebook- “Dinner on the table in 10 minutes” (but only if someone has prepped all your ingredients for you)! It’s great that Martha has pre-chopped carrots and pre-sifted flour, but the rest of us peasants have to spend time cutting and washing and measuring. When the oven beeps, I get sent into a frenzy to finish spooning batter into cupcake tins or whatever. I hate having an empty oven burning. If not bad for the oven, then it’s a pure waste of electricity.
And that, my friends, is why I usually wait until I’m almost done mixing all the ingredients before I turn on the oven.I’m not sure why I thought these muffins would be any different, but I was in such a rush to beat the oven timer that I spooned blueberry-less batter into 8 out of 12 muffin tins before I realized that I forgot the blueberries in my blueberry muffins. Yup. Go me. So in the spirit of not forgetting your blueberries – I’ve listed the oven preheating towards the end of the instructions 😉
Take advantage of summertime berry picking and use fresh berries, or just pull out the frozen kind. Either way, these healthy muffins have just the right amount of fruit in every bite without making the muffin soggy. I don’t typically like to bake with fruit because of the sogginess, but these guys did great right out of the oven and even several days after when I froze them! Next time I might up the lemon factor to try to bring out that flavor more. I bet they would taste great with lemon curd, too.
The streusel topping might make these “healthy” muffins decidedly less so, but it really helps with their texture and aesthetic appeal. Muffins don’t have to be ugly cupcakes 🙂 Plus – a sprinkle of butter crunchy goodness on top, and you’d never guess the rest of these beautiful muffins are oil and butter-free.
Whip up these muffins this weekend and freeze them so you have breakfast ready to go every day next week – if you’re anything like me, it’ll give you a reason to get up in the morning!
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup old-fashioned oats
- 1/2 cup brown sugar packed
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup vanilla greek yogurt (or 1 C buttermilk - you can make buttermilk by adding the lemon juice to regular milk and letting it sit for 10 min)
- 1 lemon zested
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- 1/2 cup applesauce
- 1 cup blueberries fresh or frozen (but not thawed)
- 2 tsp lemon zest
- 1/4 cup brown sugar packed
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/4 cup old-fashioned oats
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 4 tb butter at room temp
- In a large bowl, combine the first eight ingredients.
- Combine the egg, yogurt, applesauce, lemon zest, and lemon juice; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Toss frozen blueberries in flour before folding them in - if using fresh blueberries, skip tossing them in flour. This keeps the batter from turning purple!
- Preheat oven to 375 F. Meanwhile, coat muffin cups with cooking spray or use paper liners and divide batter among 12 muffin cups three-fourths full with batter.
- Rub the sugar and lemon zest together to bring out the lemon scent.
- Whisk together with the flour, oats, and salt.
- Cut in the butter, mixing until coarse crumbs form. Sprinkle the streusel mixture on top of the batter in the filled muffin cups
- Once oven is finished preheating, bake for 18-22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the muffin comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm or let cool and freeze. Bake at