Healthy Apple Blackberry Muffins

Learn how to make the best healthy apple blackberry muffins with this easy recipe. Grated apple provides moisture and sweetness to these healthy breakfast muffins, so they have less sugar.

These apple blackberry muffins are low in refined sugar. They definitely fall into the "healthier" muffin category, along with these blueberry bran muffins, which are also low in sugar. They make a perfect hearty breakfast muffin, made with oats, yogurt or sour cream, grated apple, and blackberries.

Jump to:

• What you need
• Substitutions
• How To Make Healthy Breakfast Muffins
• Baking Tips
• Freezer storage and defrosting
• Other Recipes to Bake with Blackberries & Other Berries
• 📖 Recipe

What you need

Both the blueberry bran muffins and these apple blackberry muffins are actually variations of the same recipe. They follow a very similar formula.

Compared to these rhubarb muffins with sour cream or these honey blueberry muffins, you can see that there's much less sugar here: one-third the sugar to be exact! But remember, fruit purées are a common baking substitution for replacing sugar when you are baking with less sugar. So you'll see grated fruit in the ingrdients list. Here's what you need to make these healthy breakfast muffins:

• Butter-I bake with unsalted butter and add salt. If you use salted butter, adjust the salt in the recipe
• Salt-I bake with Diamond Crystal Fine Kosher salt. If using regular table salt, you should add half the amount to avoid making the muffins too salty
• Sugar-there's a small amount of brown sugar in these muffins, contributing sweetness, flavour and moisture. You can use light or dark brown sugar
• Oats-this recipe was tested with large flake oats (also called rolled oats). Minute oats or quick-cooking oats may not work here, and steel-cut oats are to be avoided
• Flour-I bake with bleached all-purpose flour
• Leavening-both baking powder and baking soda are used in these muffins to ensure a lighter texture. Read about baking soda versus baking powder if you are unsure what the difference is.
• Sour cream-both full-fat or low-fat sour cream work, but I find the texture is better with 14 % sour cream
• Grated apple in the muffin batter adds sweetness, but also moisture
• Blackberries-you can use fresh or frozen blackberries
• Flavours: these low-sugar muffins call for lots of cinnamon and vanilla, two ingredients that are good at tricking you into thinking a baked good tastes sweet! Don't cut them out of this recipe because you will end up with muffins that taste very bland.

Substitutions

Here are a few baking substitutions you might consider for this recipe:

• Yogurt: use plain yogurt instead of sour cream. While both are acidic dairy ingredients, full-fat sour cream has 14 % fat, while plain yogurt has 2 % fat (more or less depending on the product you use). Both yogurt and sour cream work in this recipe, but from my tests, I much preferred the muffins baked with full-fat sour cream, which creates a more tender and moist crumb.
• Berries: you can use blueberries or raspberries in place of the blackberries, if you prefer. Fresh or frozen.
• Carrot: you can replace the grated apple with grated carrot or zucchini.

How To Make Healthy Breakfast Muffins

These muffins use the traditional muffin mixing method: your dry ingredients go in one bowl, and your wet ingredients go in another, then you combine them to make the muffin batter.

Since sugar technically falls under the wet baking ingredients category, you will treat brown sugar like a wet ingredient in this recipe and combine it with the other wet ingredients. If you whisk the brown sugar with the dry ingredients, it will stay lumpy, and you risk ending up with an under-sweetened muffin batter with lumps of sugar hiding in places.

Baking Tips

I tested baking these blackberry muffins in silicone muffin liners versus paper liners. Silicone works great, as does paper. It's up to you what you prefer to use. Just note that with silicone, the muffins might take a few minutes longer to bake since silicone is more insulating.

Freezer storage and defrosting

These muffins keep well at room temperature for up to 4 days. This recipe makes 12 muffins, so you may want to freeze part of the batch for later. I freeze them in a single layer in a large freezer bag. Then when I want a muffin, I take one out and microwave it for about 30 seconds on high. This is just enough to defrost the muffin completely and heat it through, so it's like a freshly baked muffin in the end!

Other Recipes to Bake with Blackberries & Other Berries

If you love blackberries, you can also make this delicious apple blackberry crisp with an oat crumble topping and this gorgeous blackberry almond layer cake (in the style of Milk Bar cakes).

If you tried this recipe for the best apple blackberry muffins (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!

📖 Recipe