Want to eat oatmeal on the go for breakfast? Try these apple oatmeal muffins, made with rolled oats and maple syrup (no flour!).
Want oatmeal for breakfast but you’re running out the door? Make up a batch of these apple oatmeal muffins! Alex and I used to not be muffin people. You see: most muffins are just an excuse to eat cake for breakfast. Right? They’re chock full of lots of sugar and all purpose flour: which are not bad in themselves, but lead to a major crash hours later! If you’re anything like me, you want to save your sugars and flours for dessert instead. (Like this decadent chocolate cake.) Breakfast is all about hearty, wholesome choices: which is where these apple oatmeal muffins come in!
Want another apple muffin? Our apple muffins with streusel have a crunchy streusel topping that’s to die for.
What’s the secret? Oat flour + rolled oats.
So, what’s the secret to making apple oatmeal muffins healthy and breakfast friendly? Oats. Rolled oats! Instead of using all purpose flour, you’ll use a blend of rolled oats and oat flour. And while they’re not quite as fluffy as a standard muffin, the texture is beautifully moist and perfectly spiced! The cinnamon and allspice are the perfect combination with the sweet tart apple. And instead of sugar, we’ve used maple syrup: it’s a more gentle sweetener and makes them refined sugar fee.
How to make oat flour? These days, it’s pretty easy to find oat flour in the store. But Alex and I never buy it because we like to make it at home! It’s so simple if you have a food processor or high speed blender. Here’s how to make it:
- Place 1 cup oats in a high speed blender or food processor.
- Turn it on and blend for a few minutes until ground into a fine flour! 1 cup oats will make 1 cup oat flour. (Yep, it’s 1 for 1.)
- Here are lots of oat flour recipes if you want to make more!
Notes on how to make apple oatmeal muffins
There’s not a lot of technique involved in making these apple oatmeal muffins. If you’ve ever made a muffin or pancake or waffle, you’ll know the drill: mix the dries, mix the wets, combine. Then bake! Here are a few more notes about this apple oatmeal muffins recipe:
- Use organic apples if you can. Apples are one of the top produce items to buy organic. This is a great place to use them! (PS head to our apple recipes for more ways to use them.)
- For vegan, use a flax egg. This oatmeal muffins recipe is dairy-free. If you’d like to make it totally vegan and plant based, you can use a flax egg in place of the egg.
- For the oil, use any neutral oil. We like using oil in muffins because it’s easier than melting butter or coconut oil (yep, we’re lazy!). You can use grapeseed, sunflower, or vegetable here. You also can use melted coconut oil, and if you eat dairy you could use butter for a more savory flavor.
Nutrition benefits of oats
There are lots of great things about eating these apple oatmeal muffins! Since they are made mostly of oats, they bring all the benefits of eating a big bowl of oatmeal. According to the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, oats:
- Are high in fiber
- Can reduce the risk of heart disease
- Can be helpful for weight control
More oatmeal muffins
Alex and I are a little obsessed with oatmeal muffins! They’re perfect for healthy breakfasts and snacks, smothered with a little peanut butter or almond butter. Our son Larson loves them in his lunch box at school! And we love them for snacks. Here are a few more of our oatmeal muffin recipes:
- Healthy Banana Oatmeal Muffins A fan favorite, these oatmeal muffins are super moist and come together quickly in a blender!
- Applesauce Muffins The batter is whizzed in a blender and they come out fluffy and perfectly cozy spiced.
- Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins Similar to our banana muffins, these oatmeal muffins feature bananas and tart blueberries!
- Healthy Zucchini Muffins These zucchini muffins are another take on the oatmeal muffins: this time using shredded zucchini. Add chunks of apple as an optional filling.
This apple oatmeal muffins recipe is…
Vegetarian and gluten-free. For vegan, dairy-free, and plant-based, use a flax egg.
Print
Apple Oatmeal Muffins
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 12 muffins 1x
Description
Want to eat oatmeal on the go for breakfast? Try these apple oatmeal muffins, made with rolled oats and maple syrup (no flour!).
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups oat flour OR rolled oats processed in a food processor into a flour consistency (see below)
- 1 cup rolled oats
- 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon allspice
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup milk (non dairy milk, for dairy-free), room temperature
- 1 egg, room temperature
- ½ cup maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup neutral oil (sunflower, vegetable or grapeseed)
- 1 cup diced apple (1 medium apple)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Place muffin liners in a 12 cup muffin tin.
- To make the oat flour, place 1 ½ cups rolled oats in a food processor and process until it is very fine. (Note: Do NOT try this with steel cut oats, as they are a very different texture from rolled oats!)
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the oat flour, oats, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, baking powder, and kosher salt.
- In another bowl, mix together the milk, egg, maple syrup, and vanilla, then gradually whisk in the oil.
- Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until smooth. Allow to sit for 10 minutes while the oats rehydrate.
- Meanwhile, dice the apple. After 10 minutes, gently fold in the apples to the batter. Then use a ¼ cup measure to spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until puffed and golden.
- Category: Muffins
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: Apple Oatmeal Muffins
Just made these and they are so moist and delicious, didn’t have maple syrup so used honey instead, will definitely make again.
Glad you enjoyed!
These were really good. I should have baked them longer but that might have been my oven. Thanks for the recipe.
Hi,
I was wondering if there is a substitute for maple syrup as I haven’t really come across it here in Africa….
Thanks, awaiting a response :)
You can use an equal amount of honey! Are you able to access honey?
HI,
Yes I do have access to honey, thanks so much will definitely try it :))
Much love x
These muffins are so good! Love the texture. It is too nutmeggy though, 1.5 tsp is a lot and the flavor was quite overpowering even though I didn’t even use that much. I will certainly make these again with less nutmeg because other than that they’re delish!
Thanks for making them! We’ve updated the recipe to have less nutmeg: 1/2 teaspoon. Thank you for that feedback!
As this is on the internet world wide could you maybe give some measurements we can understand here in the UK? We don’t do cups. Wherever I look for conversions for cups to grams/ozs, they are never consistent and there are wide differences.
We hope to do this in the future!
I made a double batch. I only had half the maple syrup so added honey, too. The oil I used was canola. They tasted good but were greasy – to the point there was a small puddle of grease in each muffin cup of the tin after I took them out. Next time, I will try it with half the oil.
Hi. Just made these nice muffins. I used instead of the mapel syrup homemade date paste (approx. 100gram dates and 100ml water soked for 30 min and than liquidised) Works perfectly as well. Will definitely bake them again. Thanks for the recipe 😊
Have you any experience with agave syrup? I’m wondering if it could be a substitute for the maple syrup.
Agave should work! We haven’t tested it specifically, but it usually is a good stand in for maple. Let us know how it goes!
These muffins are delicious. I added some blueberries as well and they came out perfect.
★★★★★
Want to make with out using maple syrup or honey since husband is diabetic. Is it possible to use swerve sugar substitute
That should work well! You can substitute as a 1:1. Or you could try this Applesauce Muffins recipe, since it calls for sugar and replace it with Swerve. (You could add diced apple to that one if you wanted the apple chunks.) Good luck!