Healthy muffin recipes do exist! Contrary to the nutrition info on the jumbo ones you find at convenience stores or order at a bakery, these made-from-scratch healthy breakfast muffins offer well-balanced nutrition and yummy flavor. With summery healthy blueberry muffins and healthy banana muffins plus fitting-for-fall healthy pumpkin muffins and healthy apple muffins, each of these options has fewer than 200 calories per serving.
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Apple-Streusel Muffins
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Spice up your morning routine with a warm and crumbly apple and streusel muffin. Laced with brown sugar and packed with flaxseeds, pecans, and sliced apples, these healthy apple muffins are perfect as part of a seasonal fall breakfast menu. With four grams of protein, each makes a solid, well-balanced mini meal when served with a carton of Greek yogurt.
Healthy muffin calories: 163
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Customizable Healthy Muffins
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This healthy muffin recipe is a blank canvas for all kinds of fun flavors, including lemon-poppy seed, blueberry, cheese, and oatmeal variations. (For more fiber, use half each of all-purpose and whole wheat flour as the base.) Choose your favorite, then get to mixing. All told, you're investing just 10 minutes of prep time. Before baking, top 'em all off with our sweet and simple streusel topping.
Healthy muffin calories: 136
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Blueberry and Oat-Chia Seed Muffins
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Each 1-ounce serving of chia seeds packs in about a whopping five grams of plant-based protein. Those superfood seeds star along with one of the most antioxidant-rich fruits in this healthy blueberry muffin recipe. A mix of oats and flour in the dry ingredient mixture makes these taste far more hearty than you might imagine for mini muffins.
If you're firmly on Team Savory, this roundup is still for you! Featuring spaghetti squash, fresh chives, garlic powder, and Monterey Jack cheese with jalapeño peppers, this muffin under 150 calories makes one delightful (and fairly low-carb) dinner side. Try it as an addition to the meal next time you make grilled chicken, steak, or a pasta entrée.
Healthy muffin calories: 134
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Curried Squash Muffins
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Warmly spiced and reminiscent of some of our favorite flavors from Indian cuisine, this is one of the most interesting and easy healthy muffin recipes ever developed in our Test Kitchen. Curry powder and roasted butternut squash pair up in the batter that clocks in at fewer than 150 calories per muffin. Dust the tops with powdered sugar for a sweet and showy finish.
Healthy muffin calories: 141
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Ginger-Blueberry Muffins
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Worried that lightened-up muffins might be dense and dry? This recipe is about to convince you otherwise. Cake flour ($5, Target) gives these updated healthy blueberry muffins their fluffy texture. Thanks to molasses, fresh ginger, and other cozy spices, this might just become your go-to blueberry muffin recipe.
Healthy muffin calories: 167
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Peach-Prosciutto Cornmeal Muffins
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Perhaps you've sprinkled your corn bread with bacon before. But have you tried stirring bacon's delicious cousin, prosciutto, into bread recipes? A little bit goes a long way to add a hint of salty-savory goodness and some muscle-building power to these healthy protein muffins. (Each muffin has as much protein as an egg!) Don't fret if it's not fresh peach season; frozen peaches work wonderfully to balance out that savory element with some natural sweetness.
Healthy muffin calories: 184
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Gluten-Free Zucchini Muffins with Greek Yogurt Frosting
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Take a break from the oodles of zoodles and put your zucchini haul to good use in these healthy applesauce muffins. A cup of the shredded squash teams up with a half cup of unsweetened applesauce to make the crumb of these you'd-never-guess-they're-gluten-free muffins remarkably tender and moist. Crown with a layer of vanilla-scented Greek yogurt frosting and you might just think you're devouring a cupcake.
Healthy muffin calories: 164
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Wheat Bran Muffins
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Since we don't have time every day to whip up a healthy breakfast muffin recipe from scratch, we love stocking a batch or two of the batter for these muffins in our freezer. If you, too, want to get a jump-start, mix up the wheat bran and buttermilk mixture entirely in advance, freeze for up to a month, then thaw, portion into muffin tin cups, and bake for a warm, fresh-baked batch. For a variety of flavors, portion out one cup of batter into three bowls, then dress one up with chopped dates and apples, another with shredded carrots and golden raisins, and the last with semisweet chocolate pieces and chopped toasted pecans.
They're made with whole-food ingredients, including almond flour, whole eggs, and coconut cream. We love that they're a lower-sugar option and don't contain any artificial sweeteners. Plus, the almond flour keeps these low in carbs and high in fiber.
Signs of a healthy muffin recipe are whole-food ingredients like fruit, veggies, nuts, seeds, eggs, and low-fat milk and yogurt (or a dairy-free alternative). Fats from plant-based oils or moderate amounts of butter can be incorporated into a muffin recipe — remember, you are making 12 servings.
Add strawberries to chocolate muffins. You can even experiment with crushed pineapple and mandarin oranges to add a citrus twist to your favorite muffins. We recommend adding 1/2 to 1 cup of fresh or frozen (thawed and drained) fruit. Gently fold into the batter.
Most store-bought muffins are like glorified cupcakes—they're full of sugar and simple carbs. "They can be packed with added sugar and low in fiber, sending your blood sugar levels on a roller coaster before you even get to work," says Charlotte Martin, MS, RDN, CSOWM, CPT.
When it comes to calories, carbs, and sugar, there's a clear winner: doughnuts. The fried rings have 155 fewer calories, half the carbs, and 21 fewer grams of sugar than muffins. Muffins don't lose out completely, though: They have 1 g more protein than doughnuts—and half the saturated fat.
Is an English muffin better for you than bread? A. English muffins are slightly healthier than bread because they include fewer calories, carbohydrates, fats, and sugar than bread. However, both have a high carbohydrate content, which can offer energy throughout the day, and many nutrients.
Now muffins aren't all bad. These things are only unhealthy if eaten on a regular basis. If every so often you want a muffin for breakfast or a snack, that's no big deal. When you grab a bakery muffin for breakfast daily, that's when you increase your risk for unwanted weight gain and other health issues.
English muffins are healthier options than plain bagels, since English muffins contain less carbohydrates, sodium, calories, and sugar than bagels. Similar to whole wheat English muffins, the nutritional value of a bagel can be increased by opting for a whole wheat bagel.
Eggs are responsible for giving baked goods structure, which means the amount you use directly affects the resulting texture. Using too few eggs will make your desserts dense, but using too many will make them rubbery.
Spices and Flavorings. Give your muffin or pancake mix an extra kick by adding a teaspoon or two of your favorite powdered spice. Some of my go-to additions are cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, and allspice. But have some fun and figure out what works best with your mix.
Muffins can help you build muscle if they are high in protein and have a good serving of carbohydrates. Our premium banana bread protein mix, Naked Bake, is a protein baking mix you can make muffins with. One muffin provides 15 grams of protein and only 180 calories.
The average coffee shop blueberry muffin is hardly what you'd call a health food: It's got almost 470 calories—nearly double what you'd get from a chocolate frosted donut—and most of those calories come from refined carbohydrates, primarily white flour and sugar.
Cupcake recipes generally contain much higher levels of sugar and fat. This makes cupcakes sweeter, and juicier with finer crumbs. Muffins usually have fruit, nuts, and other ingredients mixed into the batter to compensate. Because of this, muffins are usually considered healthier than cupcakes.
English muffins tend to be a little healthier than bread since English muffins have less carbohydrates, fats, and sugar than bread. While bread does contain slightly more fat when compared to English muffins, both options have 1 gram or less of total fat.
Conclusion. Muffins are a quick and easy choice for breakfast on the go, but unfortunately, many bakery and coffee shop muffins are high in calories and added sugar, and they lack protein and fiber. If your goal is to lose weight, these kinds of muffins are not the best option.
To get the benefits of long-lasting energy and fullness from these sandwiches look for those made with English muffins, flatbread or tortillas instead of biscuits. They are usually at least 100 calories lighter and much lower in saturated fat and sodium than biscuit-based sandwiches.
Introduction: My name is Aracelis Kilback, I am a nice, gentle, agreeable, joyous, attractive, combative, gifted person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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