I am quite certain that there is nothing in this world that compares to apple pie. But a warm, freshly baked muffin to wake up to in the morning is a close second.
Typically, most muffins you find in bakeries are cupcakes in disguise, relying heavily on oil, butter, and cups of sugar for their sweetness. When I’m craving a healthier muffin, I like to make them at home. These applesauce muffins and healthy apple muffins are two other favorites I often turn to.
These homemade apple pie muffins are soft, fluffy, and full of good-for-you ingredients like whole oats and fresh apples. In lieu of butter and oil, I use yogurt and applesauce to give the muffins some moisture.
What I love most about these muffins is that they are SKY HIGH. It’s taken some practice, but I finally found a few tricks to bake up mile high, fluffy muffins—no more flat muffins here. How to bake high-domed, fluffy muffins:
- You need a very, very thick batter. Much thicker than cake or cupcake batter—you want “spoonable” batter, not “pourable.”
- Do not over-mix the batter. This will create tough + flat muffins.
- Fill muffin pan cups all the way to the top, even a bit higher. Filling only 1/2 or 2/3 of the way to the top is not enough batter to produce a high-domed muffin.
- Start off with a very oven hot temperature, then lower it down. Doing this lifts the muffin top up quickly and creates a tall crust. Typically, muffins are baked at 350F – 375F the whole time, but set the oven to 425F initially, then bring back down to 350F or 375F.
I also love these apple muffins with blackberries and apples. Replace 1 cup of the apples with 1 cup of fresh or frozen blackberries. In the pictured apple blackberry muffins below, I skipped the oat streusel made with butter and simply mixed 3 Tablespoons of oats + 1 Tablespoon brown sugar. Sprinkle that over each muffin before baking.
Sky-High Apple Pie Muffins
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 14-16 muffins
- Category: Muffins
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
Homemade sky high apple pie muffins are soft, fluffy, and full of good-for-you ingredients like whole oats, fresh apples, and white whole wheat flour!
Ingredients
Oat Streusel Topping
- 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
- 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 2 Tablespoons old-fashioned whole rolled oats
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 Tablespoons (28g) unsalted butter, melted
Muffins
- 3 cups white whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 cup unsweetened almond milk (or any dairy or nondairy milk)
- 1/2 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup plain or apple-flavored yogurt
- 1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce*
- 2 large eggs
- 2 heaping cups chopped apple (peeled or not peeled—your choice)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F (218°C). Spray 12-count muffin pan with nonstick spray. Set aside.
- Prepare oat streusel topping by mixing everything together until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Set aside.
- Prepare the muffins: In a large bowl whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Set aside. In a separate large bowl, whisk together the milk, sugars, yogurt, applesauce, and eggs. Whisk wet ingredients into the flour mixture, mixing until *just combined* – do not over-mix. Gently fold in the apples.
- Spoon the batter into 12 lined muffin cups, making sure each one is filled to the very top. Lightly press a heaping spoonful of oat streusel into the tops of each muffin.
- Bake for 5 minutes at 425°F (218°C), then immediately reduce the oven temperature to 375°F (191°C) and bake for another 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cover leftover muffins tightly and store at room temperature for up to 5 days.
Notes
- Freezing Instructions: Muffins may be frozen, up to 2-3 months.
- Special Tools (affiliate links):Â 12-count Muffin Pan | Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Rubber Spatula
- Applesauce: The unsweetened applesauce gives these muffins moisture—just as oil would—without the added fat. Feel free to use vegetable oil instead of applesauce.
- Yogurt: In my muffins, I used Chobani 0% Apple Cinnamon flavor. If you can’t find an apple flavored yogurt, plain or vanilla yogurt would work as well.
Hi Sally! First I want to tell you how much I love your site, your recipes and everything you post and also I want to thank you for sharing that. I have a question for you, how can I replace yogurt in your muffin recipes? I have a cousin visiting in my house these days but her daughter is lactose and gluten allergic, I can use gluten free baking  flour and soy milk but what can I do about the yogurt? I’d really appreciate if you can help me, thanks a lot
Who about a dairy free yogurt? That should work!
Thanks a lot Sally!!! I didn’t know about dairy free yogurt, so happy to hear that!Â
Hi Sally,
I’m not sure what I did wrong but these came out very gummy in the middle. I used frozen blueberries and coconut sugar instead of brown sugar. Any idea why they would have come out that way? I’ve used many of your other recipes and they usually come out perfect!
Sally can I use sour cream instead of yoghurt in your muffin recipesÂ
Wow! I just made these tonight, and they turned iut great! I’ve never actually made a muffin that was not flat so this was really fun and they looked perfect. I will definitely use this recipe as a base for more muffins in the future, thanks!
These were absolutely divine!!! Thank you so much!
Hi Sally – I was looking for a healthy apple muffin recipe and these look great. I’m wondering about the apple sauce, though. I have a lot of apples here, and no apple sauce, so I thought I’d make it myself. But are you using sweetened or unsweetened applesauce in the recipe. I’ve been trying to use as little sugar as possible when baking, but I don’t want them to be tasteless either. Thanks!
Hi Sally recipe looks fab – looking for something to do with my cooking apples do you think this will work in these?Â
Yes, definitely.
These are wonderful.. made them with regular white flour and oil…. having one right now with my coffee…popped in the microwave 20 seconds…. I’m in heaven… love your muffins:)))
Hola Sally soy de Argentina. Quisiera tener tus manos. Buscaba muffins sin tacc y te encontre. Si tuvieras alguna receta para celiacos por las proporciones basicamente, te lo agradecerÃa mucho! Sos fabulosa!
Thank you for such a kick ass recipe! I subbed applesauce for more yogurt, which seemed to work fine. Hearty, tasty, not-too-sweet apple muffins. I totally needed a little taste of fall in July.Â
loved your tip to crank the heat to 425 the first 5 minutes and then finish these D-Lish muffins at 375. My family is loving the sky high muffins for breakfast right now – warm and fresh out of the oven.
Hi Sally! I love this recipe and was wondering if it would work well as a bread?
I’m unsure it would! I do not know the bake time.
Hi Sally,
I made these muffins yesterday, and they are INCREDIBLE! They have all the taste of a regular muffin but only 1/3 of the calories! I am thinking next time I might try a blueberry/lemon combo.
I noticed that you live in Philly and that you are a runner. Are you running the Hot Chocolate 15K in Philly on April 4th? You get a chocolate bar medal…how perfect is that? Obviously, it’s not edible, but it’s pretty cool!
Krista
I made these muffins this morning and myself, my husband and 3 kiddos were so impressed. My husband, who doesn’t like whole grain and shudders at yogurt didn’t notice that there was anything in these muffins that he didn’t like. I used fat free lemon Greek yogurt (because I didn’t have any plain, vanilla or sour cream) and added a splash of vanilla to the wet ingredients…absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much!
Wow—I just made these today and they were amazing! I am a novice at baking and didn’t expect them to be this good. They rose beautifully and really were sky-high! I didn’t have any nutmeg, so I omitted it. It was still great. I hate the fact that most muffin recipes are just cupcakes in disguise. These really are muffins!
Love your recipes, Sally! I made the Blueberry muffins last week and they were Devine. Do you think I can bake this in a loaf pan?
Hi Elizabeth, this recipe should work well in a loaf pan! Or you might enjoy this apple cinnamon bread recipe, too.
Thank you for a great recipe! I gave it a summer spin with fresh peaches and blueberries, subbing ground ginger for the nutmeg, and they are fabulously yummy and gorgeous. A dz muffins and a nice mini-loaf!
Hi Sally,
I made these last night and they are amazing. They really do taste like apple pie and thanks to your trick, they do come out sky high. Thank you for all of your wonderful recipes and for sharing them with us 🙂
By the way, I always look forward to my next meal as a reward for getting through my run – especially my long Saturday morning runs!
Would you be able to use Greek yogurt instead of a regular yogurt?
Yes, that would be fine.
Hello! These muffins sounds great, thank you for sharing this recipe! Just wondering if you would recommend using 1/8 cup applesauce and 1/8 cup canola oil instead of all applesauce or all oil? I like having a little oil for the softness of the muffin but not too much you see!
Hey Elsie! Yep, 1/8 of each would be just fine. Enjoy!
Hi Sally,
I have whole wheat flour and AP flour on hand. Would you recommend subbing all AP flour for the white whole wheat flour or could I do a combo of part whole wheat and part AP? If so, in what ratio do you recommend?
I recommend all all-purpose flour. Or you can do half AP and half whole wheat.
These came out extremely well! I had never made streusel before, so I was a bit skeptical but it was so yummy! I gave the muffins to my neighbors as well and they absolutely loved it!! I have only one ques-my streusel did not stick to my muffins after baking. It was crumbly(in a good way) and some of it fell while picking out the muffins from the muffin stand. Could you tell me what did I do wrong?
That’s simply because there is no butter in the streusel. It’s supposed to be crumbly – try pressing down on the streusel after topping the muffin batter with it. That will help it adhere.
These look absolutely DELICIOUS! When I saw the pictures of these I just had to bake some 🙂 But I don’t have any ground nutmeg…is there a substitute for them that you would recommend? I don’t want to substitute the wrong thing! 🙂
I would simply leave it out, Rosie. Enjoy!
I know this recipe is been around for a little while but since it’s apple season just wanted to say thank you for it. I ALWAYS use your “Sky high” tips on every muffin I bake now. I even used this technique on those super easy box of cake mix/ can of pumpkin muffins that’s an old weight watchers recipe. For the first time in years of making them they came out looking like actual muffins and were super moist. Thanks so much for your tips!
PS- I also will never ever measure dry ingredients in a liquid measuring cup or vice versa and ALWAYS spoon dry ingredients in to the cup instead of scooping. My husband now thinks I’m a baking genius 😉
Woohoo! Cara, I’m so glad this recipe (and the tips in the post) are helpful for you! These muffins are a classic favorite and always will be. I’m so glad you tried this! I’m glad you’re now spooning and not scooping!
I made these this morning, and like all of your recipes, they came out beautiful and amazingly delicious. I did add one teaspoon of vanilla and about 1 cup of caramel bits to the batter – the result was sooo yummy that I’ve been picking at them all day 🙂 Thank you for the recipe! Can’t wait to buy your book, it is already saved in my amazon cart!
I must try adding caramel bits next time, Jenny! Great suggestion. Thank you SO much for your excitement about my cookbook. Means a lot!
Thank you so much for this tip, Sally! I use this for all my muffin recipes now! My muffins have never been better :))
Very glad to help, Kelli!
Fantastic! I made these in a mini muffin tin with your suggestions to Lindsey on temp and time. They were a huge hit with my family. I am definitely adding this recipe to my favorites. Thank you for sharing it.
So happy you enjoyed the mini version, Adriane!
Hi! I’d like to make these as mini-muffins for my daughter’s preschool, but don’t see the bake time suggestions for the mini version. Would you bake 5 min at 425? Then how many minutes at the lower temp?
For mini muffins, the bake time will be around 8-10 minutes at 375. No need for a higher temp with such small muffins.
Fantastic! I finally got to make these and I think these are my favourite out of all your muffins so far…I’m a sucker for apple pie. For the first time (I think ever) I didn’t over mix the batter when trying to make high domed muffins and it finally worked!!!! Thanks for all the tips!!
So glad you made and love these muffins! Certainly one of my favorites.
Hi Sally!
I am loving your blog/recipes! I’ve made tons of your goodies, all to rave reviews! Unfortunately, I am going to have to break up with you once I deliver this baby which is currently making me a baking/nesting fiend. 🙂
I was thinking of making this muffin recipe as a bread, in a loaf pan. Any tips? Could I still use the tips to get BIG bread?
Hi Elisabeth! I’ve never tried making these muffins into a loaf before so I cannot suggest a baking time. The “tall muffin” trick did not work for a loaf I made one time, but that is because it was dense banana bread. Give it a try! Thanks so much and good luck for the remainder of your pregnancy. What is too come is much more excited than baking anyway 🙂
These are probably the tallest muffins I’ve ever made. Very impressed. I made them with banana instead of apple and they were still good. They tasted VERY healthy though, which is o.k. because I could still put some butter or cream cheese on it while eating. Thanks for your “research” on making them taller.
Hey Robin! That’s great to hear – so glad you enjoyed them! I’ll have to try them with banana soon.
YUM! These are excellent, Sally! I LOVE apple anything. I’m a fruity girl – I always gravitate towards fruity things over chocolate. Just so you know, I used applesauce & oil and omitted the yogurt since I can’t do dairy. They were moist and heavenly. Thanks for the amazing recipes! 🙂
Sky High Indeed! These came out as beautiful as your photos and they were delicious to eat! Moist, flavorful and the streusel took it over the top!