These vegan blueberry oatmeal muffins are just like enjoying your morning oats in a tin! Everyone will love the nourishing whole food plant-based batter dotted with juicy fruits.
Our healthy vegan blueberry oatmeal muffins need a place in your breakfast or snack rotation! They are so moist and delicious yet incredibly nutritious and easy to make.
Packed with berries and hints of cinnamon and vanilla, they are a healthy treat the whole family will love — and all you need are 30 minutes plus a handful of affordable pantry staples.
Nobody will believe that they are sweetened only with dates and fully whole food-plant based.
Images by Logan Ink
Why you’ll love them
- Basically fluffy baked oatmeal
- Made with affordable pantry ingredients
- Totally whole food plant-based
- Free from oil, gluten & sugar
- Perfect for meal prep
- Nutritious & satisfying
- Quick & easy to make
- Kid-friendly & customizable
- Easily customizable to your preferences
Enjoy fresh blueberries in every bite with these healthy crowd-pleasers!
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Ingredients needed
- Oats – they can be ground into flour in seconds for a cheap gluten-free base
- Blueberries – well, not very surprising, right? Feel free to use the berries of your choice, but there’s nothing quite like some juicy blueberries baked into soft muffins
- Dates – they make these healthy vegan muffins super moist and naturally sweet while adding essential nutrients
- Applesauce – allowing for this recipe to be low-fat yet moist, adding fiber and almost no calories
- Flaxseeds – high in fiber with healthy omega-3 precursors and a wonderful replacement for eggs in baking recipes
- Spices – we went for two basic spices to keep this recipe really fuss-free, but the sky’s the limit here; we’ll even let you in on some delicious flavoring options in just a second.
We’re positive that you’ll have at least most of them already in your kitchen! Keep on reading to find easy food swaps.
How to make healthy vegan muffins
All you need to make these healthy vegan blueberry muffins is a bowl, blender and muffin tins.
Here’s the whole process!
- Make the flax egg mixture: put flax seeds, water, vanilla extract, soy milk and dried dates into a bowl and set aside
- Combine dry ingredients: that’s your (homemade) oat flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt; roughly stir them together in a large bowl
- Mix with wet ingredients: your wet mixture needs to be blended for a few seconds to create an even wet paste; then, pour it over your oat flour mixture and combine with a spoon.
- Fold in blueberries: once the batter is made, gently fold in the blueberries without overmixing the batter or breaking the berries!
- Fill muffin tins: scoop the blueberry muffin batter into paper muffin cups or a silicone muffin pan using a spoon; make sure to fill each mold about ¾ of the way.
- Bake for 20 minutes, let cool for 10 & enjoy!
Storage
These vegan muffins can be stored at room temperature for up to 5 days in an airtight container lined with a paper towel to soak up excess moisture.
For longer storage, place your blueberry muffins in a freezer-safe container or bag, wrapped individually so you can take out and defrost as many as you want at any given time.
They can be stored for up to 2 months (perhaps even longer) in the freezer. To enjoy post-freeze, simply defrost at room temperature for a bit, then warm in the toaster oven before eating.
Serving suggestions
Enjoy your healthy vegan blueberry muffins on their own, with a dollop of nut butter or raspberry jam, vegan yogurt, cashew cream cheese, or ice cream!
They taste great alongside a cup of vegan vanilla latte or homemade almond milk, too.
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Grab all of our 9 vegan & healthy eating PDFs at once! Including food lists, meal plan, easy recipes, and shopping & nutrition tips!
FAQs & tips
Substitution ideas
- Swap the blueberries for any berries of your choice – note that larger berries need to be chopped.
- You can even use frozen berries, but you need to either stir them in very last minute (still frozen) or let them defrost for about 30 minutes, then cast the excess liquid before folding them into your batter
- No applesauce in your cupboard? Use ¾ cup of mashed banana instead!
- If you want to make them soy-free, feel free to choose your favorite plant-based milk
- Don’t need the muffins to be gluten-free? We’ve also made them with whole wheat flour and spelt flour before, and they turned out great!
- Should you have an all-purpose gluten-free flour blend on hand, you can use it in place of the oat flour.
- If you’re used to very sweet baked goods or desserts, you’ll want to add some brown sugar, maple syrup or rice syrup to the wfpb batter!
- Add ground or chopped nuts to the batter to make the muffins higher in calories. Nut butter also works well; you just need to adjust the other components.
- Feel free to use spices and flavors like gingerbread or pumpkin spice, cocoa, cinnamon, cardamom, peppermint, lemon zest or whatever else you fancy before baking!
- Other tasty add-ins include coconut flakes, dried cranberries or raisins, chocolate chips, soy yogurt, poppy seeds, or an espresso shot
How to make oat flour
Oat flour isn’t something you buy off the shelf, it’s a simple flour you can create at home using rolled oats.
Simply measure by weight and put the amount of oats for a specific recipe into your blender jar or food processor. Then, grind the oats into a flour — as finely or coarsely as you wish.
You don’t even need an expensive and high-end kitchen tool for this!
How to make oil-free muffins
One healthy baking trick we used here is to swap oil or butter for applesauce. It’s a great egg replacement, too!
It mimics the texture of oil and adds moisture but only very few calories.
Other healthy vegan swaps for oil include mashed banana or white beans, silken tofu, aquafaba, dairy-free yogurt, pumpkin puree, or nut butter!
We also recommend using silicone bakeware, so you don’t have to grease your muffin tins.
More healthy vegan treats
Try some of the following whole food plant-based desserts next!
Did you try our blueberry muffins and like them? Please let us know in the comments below, leave a rating and Pin the recipe here!
Ingredients
Flax egg and buttermilk
- 12 dates pitted and roughly chopped
- 1.5 tbsp flaxseeds ground
- ¾ cup soy milk unsweetened (180 g)
- ¾ cup water 180 g
- ½ tsp lemon juice freshly squeezed
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
Batter ingredients
- 2 cups oat flour 180 g
- ¾ cup applesauce unsweetened (180 g)
- 1 cup blueberries 100 g
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Start by making the flax egg and vegan buttermilk. In a small bowl, combine flaxseeds, soy milk, water, lemon juice, vanilla extract and dates. Set aside.
- Next, preheat the oven to 400° F (200° C) and prepare your muffin forms or pan.
- In a large bowl, add all of the dry ingredients: oat flour, baking powder and spices. Roughly mix them with a spoon.
- Now, add the flax-date mixture and applesauce in a blender and blend until smooth.
- Pour this mixture over your dry ingredients and stir until a homogenous, thick batter forms.
- Then, fold in the blueberries (and any other add-ins of your choice) – make sure not to overmix!
- Now, take a spoon, a ¼ measuring cup or an ice cream scoop (which works surprisingly well!) to divide the batter evenly into 12 muffin cups, filling them until ¾ full each.
- Transfer your muffin pan into the oven. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with only a few moist crumbs and the tops turn golden brown.
- Once the blueberry muffins are done, remove them from the oven and let cool for a couple of minutes before taking them out of the tin.
- These vegan muffins can be stored at room temperature for up to 5 days in an airtight container. Line the container with a paper towel to soak up excess moisture.
Notes
- *if you’re allergic to gluten, make sure to use certified gluten-free oats
- You can omit the blueberries or add any other berry of choice to these easy muffins!
- Other spices such as cinnamon, cocoa or gingerbread spice also work well here.
- To make these blueberry muffins soy-free, use another plant-based milk for the batter.
- If you don't have as many (or any) dates on hand, simply use a different sweetener such as brown sugar or maple syrup and add more applesauce instead.
- Likewise, if you’re used to very sweet muffins, you might want to add some brown sugar or maple syrup to this healthy recipe.
- Find many customization ideas in the article above.
Your instructions call for flax seed to be mixed in with the milk, water, and dates, but the ingredients don’t mention flax seeds. Are we missing the ingredient or is that just a typo in the instructions?
Thanks, they look good.
Hi Leanne, sorry, my bad! The 1.5 tbsp ground flax seeds were missing from the ingredients list. I edited the post and it should be all fine now.
Wishing you a lot of fun trying the recipe!
Very informative. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Well, thanks for checking it out! Hope you liked the muffins too if you tried it so far.
Have a beautiful day,
Alena
Just made these!! very yummy :)
Thanks so much for the lovely feedback! Very happy to know you like them :)
I’m doing a project for food science about good and bad carbs, about how many carbs are in his recipe?
Hey Christina,
why not use a free tool like cronometer.com and plug in the recipe to see the nutritional value? That’s what I would do.
We don’t want our readers to focus on numbers and rather just eat healthy food while listening to their body.
Best wishes,
Alena
Tried these today. I didn’t have any dates so I replaced those with figs that I had. Very tasty!
Thanks so much for the great feedback! Awesome to know that they work well when using figs, too :)
Not sure what I could have done wrong here. I know a creamy non dairy milk works best but I only had rice milk and the recipe didn’t state it had to be creamy so I gave it a try and followed the recipe to a “T”. Was super runny and debated adding more ground oat in but wanted to follow the recipe so I didn’t.. at the 20 min mark the tops were golden brown, toothpick came out easily but after letting them set for 20 mins out of the oven, the insides are just so underdone. Just leaving this review for anyone else who feels the batter is too thin and may have used rice milk, go with your gut and add more ground oat. My review star number is based off of using rice milk, I’m sure the recipe is great and will try again with a different milk. Thank you!
Hey Stephanie,
thanks so much for the feedback! To be honest, I’m not sure if I ever tried them using another plant-based milk than soy. Sorry to hear about the fail, I’ll make sure to mention this in the recipe above so that other chefs are being warned ;)
Let me know if the re-do is better!
Warmly,
Alena
I just made them with almond milk, and added cranberries because I did not have blueberries. It worked perfectly. Delicious. Thanks.
sounds fantastic and so delicious! Thanks for sharing your own version, I’m always up for some modifications :)
Can I try this with almond milk or hazelnut milk? And would the measurement be the same or different?
Hey Dalia, pretty sure you can use any kind of plant-based milk you like! Let us know how it tastes with hazelnut milk, sounds so delicious :)
I have a question please ~ can you share a weight on the “12 dates”. We use the large organic medjool and I’m thinking 12 of those may be too many. They ‘re so big compared to say a deglet noor. Thanks so much!
Debbie in WA Ü
Hey Debbie,
the dates I used in this recipe are definitely smaller than medjool dates – as we’re away on vacation right now and I have neither dates nor a scale here, I cannot give you an exact number. I’d suggest you try making them with 8 medjool dates and see what the consistency and sweetness is like!
Will follow up with a clear number for you once we’re back.
Thanks for your interest :)
Warm wishes,
Alena
How genuis, love that they don’t contain any added sugars at all!
Truly a breakfast in form of a dessert ;)
The kids will take these to school next week.
Thanks for the feedback, hope the kids are going to like them!
I made my muffins last night. They were good, I love the fact that I can eat them without the concern of consuming too much sugar. only thing I regret is not adding enough blueberries. Btw, I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk because I try to stay away from soy products. Thanks for sharing the recipe.
sounds delicious, I bet vanilla almond milk makes for a very nice soy milk swap :) Thanks for your feedback, we’re all about recipes that only contain ingredients which are truly good for you!
Warm wishes,
Alena
I used frozen blueberries so muffins were not done after 20 minutes . I wish i had the smaller wild blueberries so they would distribute more evenly. I used 11 medjool dates since weight nor kind were indicated. Flavor is rather bland. I’d add more cinnamon next time.
Hi Karen,
thanks so much for the feedback! Yes, I might edit the baking time and increase it since others also mentioned this issue. Next time I make them, I’ll weigh the dates and add a more precise number. Depending on what kind of recipes or food you’re used to, I can imagine them being a bit bland. I personally eat very low salt, sugar, and fat, so they are like heaven to me, haha! But I’d love for my recipes to taste wonderful to the masses, meaning I might make some adjustments in the future.
Warm wishes,
Alena
I made these with frozen blueberries and unsweetened almond milk. They taste delicious and I love the low sugar. However, the muffins stuck to the muffin liners. I wonder if cooking longer would help?
Hey Heather,
thanks so much for the insight and feedback! Yes, the consistency issue can happen when you freestyle a bit with the ingredients / quantities or the oven isn’t as powerful. Sometimes, I do leave them in the oven for a bit longer when they seem too soft. Next time I do them, I check to see if I should just write down a longer baking time in the recipe!
Thanks again and glad to know that you like our recipes :)
Warmly,
Alena
These muffins sound incredible and just what I need right now!! I’m going to make these this week :)
Hi Alena!
I just made these last night and they turned out perfect!! So yummy. I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk instead and didn’t include the dates since I forgot to buy them lol. They still turned out great. I was wondering if you knew the nutritional content about this recipe?
Thank you!
Thank you so much for being really specific about the flax seeds. You wrote ground seeds. So many recipes say to use X amt. of flax seeds and don’t say ground seeds or not. It makes a BIG difference. Also, I have begun to use less applesauce (when a recipe calls for 1 cup or so) and instead use a quarter cup of tahini for part of the cup amount to provide a more “buttery” texture. This works for cookies and other goodies and does not affect the taste. Just a thought. Thank you for all you do for us.
I made these exactly as the recipe is written and they came out perfectly delicious! Lovely vegan and oil free recipe.
I love these muffins. I didn’t have blueberries so I used peaches and they turned out amazing thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe.
oh yummy, this sounds like such a great idea! thanks for the comment :)
Will love more oat recipes theyre amazing.. oats are my new favourite thing
How much oat flour for this recipe? Oat flour is mentioned in the “instructions” , but, not in the list of ingredients.
Hi Bonny, it’s right in the beginning of the ingredients:
2 cups rolled oats, ground (180g)
Hope this helps! Enjoy the muffins :)
I tried to make these but ended up with soggy middles and burnt outsides! I don’t know what I did wrong – my first guess was the oven was too hot but I put it at the right temperature. Thank you for the recipe and I will have to try again another time – but any suggestions for what you can do with undercooked muffins? Like put them with some vegan ice cream or something?
Hey Rosie,
awww so sorry to hear about that! I just made them again yesterday and they turned out just right – did you make any adjustments to the recipe? Maybe baking them on a lower rack would prevent them from burning which is what I usually do. Lower temperature and longer baking time will help with your problem, too.
Since these muffins are basically just baked oatmeal, you can serve them similarly when they are undercooked. Topped with vegan yogurt or ice cream sounds like a fantastic idea!
Best wishes,
Alena
Can you substitute flax for aquafaba?
haven’t tried it but I’m pretty sure this will work :) I’ve made them without any traditional egg substitute at all and still liked them! The applesauce helps, too.
My got very sloppy inside, is this normal? I used fresh dates, i didn’t know it was supposed to be dried dates. Can you dry fresh dates somehow? (without using a dehydrator)
Hey Corinne,
I also used somewhat fresh dates before, it’s possible that I used less plant-based milk in this case. It’s really just adjusting the other components to create the right consistency! Sorry that yours turned out so sloppy. And I don’t know how to dry dates, maybe in the oven…
Best wishes!
How much sugar should be used if you don’t have any dates?
depending on your preferred sweetness, I’d start with half a cup! You’ll need to increase any of the wet components in this case too for the right texture, though :)
I would love to try this recipe, but it doesn’t give the amount of oat flour needed. I keep oat flour in my cupboard so that I don’t have to make it for every recipe. For those of us who keep it on hand, please include the amount of oat flour.
sure, it’s 180 grams of rolled oats which is the same amount of weight in flour (6.35 oz). Hope this helps! :)
I loooove this recipe! I’ve already made it several times. I don’t have linseeds so I use a mashed banana, and also add some chopped walnuts. Delicious, healthy and filling! Thank you! ????????
sounds fantastic, thanks so much for the feedback!
What was the size of the dates that you used? Will 12 deglet noor dates work?
we like to use larger ones (Medjool) but any type will work – I’d recommend you use 14-15 deglet noor dates instead
I made these yesterday, but I used strawberries instead of blueberries. They are delicious and so easy to make. These will definitely become a staple. Thanks for the great and healthy recipe.
Wasted quite a bit of money on ingredients for these and they ended up in the trash because they didn’t bake through, no matter how long I left them in the oven. Outside was over done and the middle was still goo.
Can you freeze the muffins?
I haven’t tried it yet but wouldn’t know why not :)
I can’t thank you enough! I have recently cut out all sugar and am so happy to find a natural replacement like dates ! God bless you thank you! It gives me great joy feeding my family well without them feeling like they can’t enjoy treats .
that’s wonderful to know, thank you so much Anneliese! Happy you liked the recipe :)