Here comes another amazing vegan recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I can assure you that this is the best eggless/vegan blueberry muffins one can bake.
It's as light as an angel food cake made with only egg whites. You can imagine how light that cake would be.
So these eggless blueberry muffins which use vinegar as an egg substitute are also equally light and airy.
I used apple cider vinegar this time and got no aftertaste or smell from the vinegar. I personally feel that white vinegar has an aftertaste and smell.
I have made this vegan blueberry recipe a couple of times with many variations in using different flavors and ingredients, yet the recipe yields perfect muffins every time. I have used lemon zest, orange zest, orange juice, rice milk, and almond milk for flavorings and the liquid portion. I prefer these eggless blueberry muffins with orange flavoring the most.
I have always loved the combination of blueberry and orange. This orange blueberry bread is another best example of how lovely this combination is.
In my early days of venturing into vegan baking, I have used soy milk as a vegan substitute for dairy milk and have always felt that soy milk tends to give a rubbery texture to the baked treat. I don't know if it's just me or if others have felt it too.
That's the reason I have stopped using soy milk and these days mainly use rice milk and almond milk. Bot these non-dairy kinds of milk don't affect the texture.
I have another version of these muffins which uses whole wheat pastry flour, flax meal, maple syrup - healthy vegan blueberry muffins.
How to make vegan blueberry muffins?
Here is the step-by-step pictorial recipe on how to make fluffy vegan blueberry muffins from scratch:
Top Tip
This vegan blueberry muffin recipe is one of the most tried recipes from the blog and I get a lot of questions asking for substitutions and many other things. I have tried to answer it all either individually or consolidating similar questions and created one below.
So please take some time to go through all the questions and answers before trying the recipe or before repeating the same question in the comments section. Thank you.
If you tried this Vegan Blueberry Muffins recipe, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the 📝 comments below!
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Recipe
Vegan Blueberry Muffins
Ingredients
- 2 cups Unbleached All Purpose Flour (I used bleached)
- 1 and ½ teaspoons Baking Soda
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- 1 teaspoon Lemon/orange Zest
- ¾ to 1 cup Sugar
- 1 cup any non-dairy milk
- ⅓ cup any oil with neutral flavor
- 1 teaspoon vanilla/lemon/orange extract (optional)
- 1 tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1 and ½ cups Fresh OR Frozen Blueberries
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400F/200C (see My Notes) for 15 minutes. Lightly grease a muffin tin.
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and orange zest.
- Combine the sugar, milk, oil, extract, and vinegar in a large bowl. Mix well.
- Add the dry and wet ingredients to stir until just combined. Don't over-stir.
- Gently fold in the berries using a rubber spatula.
- Fill the muffin tins about ⅔rds full.
- Bake at 400F for about 15 minutes, reduce the temperature to 375F and bake for another 7-8 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Remove from the oven and let it cool for 5 minutes. After that remove the muffins from the tins and cool on a wire rack.
Taste & Texture
Nutrition
Recipe FAQs
I know that it's easy to get tempted to replace the oil/fat in a baking recipe with applesauce to make it fat-free, but that would result in dense and dry muffins. It won’t be as airy as using oil alone. So I would suggest just replacing half the quantity of oil with applesauce.
Since the acidic content of lemon juice is less when compared to vinegar you might have to double the quantity of vinegar. For example, if a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of vinegar, use 2 teaspoons of lemon juice.
Lemon zest is nothing but grating the skin of the lemon. Care should be taken so that the inner white sheet from the skin does not peel away because it will be bitter. Lemon extract is like vanilla, and almond extract is in liquid form.
I wouldn't say that it's compulsory, but it will give these blueberry muffins a nice flavor without baking powder. You may choose to use orange zest/extract instead of simply vanilla extract will be good too.
Opening the oven door quite too often while it is baking makes cold air enter the oven and might be the reason for the muffins to sink. Another reason is that you used too much batter for each muffin.
No it doesn’t work like that. You would have to use Xanathan gum. I haven't baked this recipe gluten-free and have read that simply substituting the all-purpose flour with gluten-free flour would not work especially in baked goods that have to rise, like muffins, cupcakes, and cakes. Brownies and cookies should not be that much of a problem to bake gluten-free and can be done without xanthan gum.
Gluten-free and egg free is a lot of trial and error methods only. But some of the readers did mention that they tried this recipe gluten-free using rice flour and gluten-free mix (which already has the xantham gum in it). You may try it at your discretion. I will try to bake a gluten-free version shortly and blog about it soon.
Certainly you can. Just use dairy milk and if you prefer butter, melted butter instead of oil. One of the readers suggested that the muffins turn out better if oil is used instead of melted butter though.
Any oil that has a neutral flavor. Peanut oil, sunflower oil, (refined) coconut oil, avocado oil, etc could work on this homemade vegan blueberry muffins recipe.
You can try it at 350F but bake it a few minutes longer.
Halving the recipe may not work out always. It's again for you to experiment and see. Another option is to bake all the muffins and freeze the remaining and use it later. If you decide to halve the recipe and use a 12-cup pan, then you will have to fill the rest of the cups with little water so that the muffins will bake evenly and doesn’t get dried out.
You can try a flaxseed meal, but I’m pretty sure the muffins won’t be as airy and light as those with lemon and vinegar. You can blend a teaspoon of flaxseed meal with 3 tablespoons of warm water.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) If you try to peel off the wrapper while the muffins are still warm
2) If you make it low-fat or fat-free
3) If you don't lightly grease the liners with non-stick cooking spray.
The temperature does not change, but you need to bake it for a shorter time than you would bake regular-sized muffins. Somewhere between 12-15 minutes.
I have explained it in detail here: Why does fruit sink to bottom of the cake?
Rice milk is derived from cooked white/brown rice. You can use any other non-dairy milk like almond milk, oat milk, hemp milk, etc. I personally don't prefer using soy milk because it gives a sticky texture to the baked goods. For vegan baking, my choice is either rice milk or almond milk.
Yes you can use any other berries or fruits of your choice. Or even add-ons like nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruits, etc.
Mmm says
These are amazing! I didn't have lemons or the lemon extract so just used a tsp of vanilla extract, fresh blueberries tossed in flour, and 180g sugar - perfect sweetness and great texture. Thank you for recipe!
Madhuram says
You're very welcome.
Lori Romick says
Absolutely delicious!! I did substitute 1/2 cup of the flour with whole wheat flour and 2 tablespoons ground flax seeds- but this recipe was just what I was looking for. Thanks!
Madhuram says
You're very welcome, Lori.
Cassandra says
I halved the amount of sugar, missed out the lemon zest and lemon extract (didn't have any) and used extra virgin olive oil, raw milk and frozen blueberries. They were unbelievabley light, fluffy and tasted amazing.
Madhuram says
Thank you very much for the feedback, Cassandra.
Laura says
Can I mix these ingredients manually using a whisk or mixing using a stand mixer with paddle attachment is recommended?
Madhuram says
You don't need a mixer for this recipe, Laura. I don't even own a stand mixer. For all my recipes I either use a normal whisk or electric beater.
Ashley says
These turned out great! I used vanilla extract instead of lemon, and skipped the zest.
Madhuram says
Thank you, Ashley.
Mohana says
Hi all it's my favourite recipe and all my friends absolutely love it. Thank you for this
Madhuram says
You're welcome, Mohana.
Haleh says
Great recipe! Moist inside, crunchy outside. I only made half the recipe so we wouldn’t eat it all:)
Madhuram says
Thanks for the feedback, Haleh.
Hema Ramanathan says
Amazing recipe. Followed to the dot and turned out Awesome. Vanished from my tea table within a few minutes. Thanks Madhuram
Madhuram says
You're welcome, Hema.
Janet says
I was excited about making this after reading the reviews, but I ended up being disappointed. I cut the recipe in half and I do understand how to calculate half, lol. The lemon abstract was replaced by vanilla, because that’s what I had. I used organic brown sugar. It took around 40 minutes to bake. The canola oil seemed strong. Any idea where I went wrong?
Madhuram says
Sorry to hear that it didn't turn out good, Janet. 40 minutes is too much baking time. Halving the recipe will be reducing all the measurements into half. It should work out fine. I have done that before. Did you reduce all the ingredients to 50% measurement?
Monika says
I just made these muffins and they were so delicious! It was as if I was taking a bite into the sunshine! The only issue I found was that the blueberries (I used frozen) fell apart in the muffin. What should I have done differently?
Notes: I made this using whole milk, lime zest, lime juice (2 tsp instead of extract), and frozen blueberries.
Madhuram says
Wow! What a creative expression, Monika! Taking a bite into the sunshine! Lovely! Hope you didn't thaw the frozen berries. Just mix it in a teaspoon of flour and add it to the batter at the very end and give a light twirl with a spatula. Overmixing will mess it up.
Tennessee says
This is a great and easy recipe and it said it made 12 but it has even more than that and it is great because we were out of eggs and I couldn’t find anything except this and it’s a great one , I highly recommend this recipe to anyone
Madhuram says
Thank you very much, Tennessee.
Kristina Ray says
Great recipe! I added vanilla extract and some cinnamon instead of lemon zest and I think they turned out well. Thanks!
Madhuram says
Thanks, Kristina.
Kelli says
My batter came out very thick. Any suggestions?
Madhuram says
The recipe has perfect measurements, but sometimes I think the type of flour we use might slightly affect how much liquid it absorbs. You can try to dilute it with some milk/water.
Amy C says
Definitely spoon your flour into your measuring cup. Scooping flour with the measuring cup gives you way more flour than the recipe calls for. 🙂
Melissa says
Thank you for this recipe. Our family is staying in amid the coronavirus crisis and baking is an all time favorite pass time. These muffins are delicious!!! We used King Arthur Gluten free measure for measure flour, olive oil instead of canola oil and hemp milk because our son is nut free. Excellent recipe!!! We will make it again. So good our non food allergy child devoured these. Lol
Madhuram says
Thank you very much, Melissa. Stay safe!
shailja says
Hi. Could you please share gram measurements for this? Thanks a lot! really eager to try.
Madhuram says
Hi Shailaja, can you please check the baking measurements page for tables to convert the recipe into grams? Thank you.
Madeleine Cornwell says
Madhuram!
I made this yesterday, and I was so happily surprised at the results. The texture was soft and moist and very flavorful and I didn't miss the eggs at all. I didn't have fresh or frozen blueberries, so I used dried blueberries that I soaked in water before incorporating them in the batter. Unfortunately most of them sank to the bottom, but still yummy. I also made some muffin tops, since I doubled the recipe. My husband loved them too, and he's not a huge fan of sweet muffins. Definitely keeping this in my favorites. I can't wait to try the spinach banana muffin and prove for myself that I can eat spinach in a sweet food! Thank you so much!
Madhuram says
You're very welcome, Madeleine. When using dried fruits you will have to toss them in flour so that it won't sink at the bottom. I'm sure you will love the spinach banana muffins!
Anshika Aggarwal says
I think baking soda quantity is too much. Try lessening it.
Angela says
Hi Madhuram! I made these blueberry muffins and they were AMAZING!!! I used thin coconut milk instead of rice milk and distilled white vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar. I used almost 1 full cup of sugar as my blueberries were more on the tarty side. The texture was perfect and the lemon flavour complements the taste of the muffins so well. Thanks a ton for sharing this recipe!!!!
Madhuram says
You're very welcome, Angela. Adding coconut milk is a wonderful variation. Does the muffin smell coconutty? Is it too overpowering or just mild?
Angela says
I used store bought coconut milk which is very thick and creamy. So I added water to make it thin ( like the 2nd extract of coconut milk). Not a soul would say that coconut milk has been used to make the muffins! It's not overpowering at all. It's too mild that you can't get the coconutty flavour one bit.
PS - I forgot to rate the recipe previously so I'm giving it with this comment.
Madhuram says
Oh, wow! I will be trying it soon with coconut milk too. I have a couple of cans at home.
Thank you very much for clarifying and for the rating, Angela. I appreciate it. 🙂
Shirley VanGarde says
Good eggless recipe. Combined dry ingredients and liquids separately, then gently folded together. Made 55 minimuffins perfectly golden at 375F for 12 min, cooked direct in pan no papers. Unexpectedly needed to make vegan muffins with no time to run to store. Used unsweetened rice milk, lemon juice as the acid for the soda, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds instead of blueberries, added some cinnamon and nutmeg. This guest prefers lower sugar so I used 1/2 c and it was fine. Like all eggless muffins, there is extra leavening and the soda flavor comes through. This batch was quickly eaten by those w/o dietary restrictions too.
Madhuram says
That's awesome, Shirley. Thank you very much for the detailed feedback.