This is a recipe for six fruit-packed blackberry hazelnut spice muffins with a healthy, homy vibe. Easily doubled to make twelve.
Blackberry Hazelnut Spice Muffins
Cuisine: American6
standard muffins28
minutes10
minutes400°F
If using a 12-cup tin, fill empty cups three-quarter full with water. Recipe can easily be doubled.
Ingredients
1.5 oz. (3 Tbs) butter
2.625 oz. (1/2 cup) AP flour
2.75 oz. (1/2 cup) whole wheat flour
2.25 oz. (5 Tbs) brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ginger
Pinch of clove or nutmeg
1 orange
1.5 oz. (1/3 cup) minced crystalized ginger
2.5 oz. (1/4 cup) egg whites (from 2 eggs)
3.5 oz. (6 Tbs) Greek yogurt
5 oz. (3/4 cup) buttermilk
5 oz. (1 cup) blackberries, halved if large
1.5 oz. (1/4 cup) hazelnuts, chopped
Directions
- Melt the butter and set it aside to cool.
- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the dry ingredients by hand until well combined, 100 strokes. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the peel from 1/2 of the orange. Eat the orange. Mince the peel. Whisk 2 tsp (packed) of the minced peel into the dry ingredients, 25 strokes. Repurpose remaining minced peel. Add the crystalized ginger to the flour mixture and rub it in by hand to make sure that none of the ginger is clumped together. In a small mixing bowl, whisk the egg whites, yogurt, buttermilk, and butter until well combined, 250 increasingly vigorous strokes. Allow these ingredients to come to room temperature, 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Using a flexible spatula, combine the ingredients swiftly, stirring and folding rather than beating, and stopping as soon as all the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be lumpy and thick; add a little buttermilk if necessary. Stir in the berries, using only as many strokes as needed to distribute them evenly.
- Spoon the batter into a standard-size, 6-count silicone muffin tin. Sprinkle nuts over muffins. Press the nuts gently and slightly into the batter. Bake until the muffins are nicely browned and a tooth pick inserted into the center of one of them comes out clean, 28 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for 10 minutes before taking them out of the tin. Serve warm.
Notes
- Substitutions: 1.375 oz. (1/4 cup) bread flour + 1.25 oz. (1/4 cup) cake flour for the AP, 1 whole egg + 1 white for the 1/4 cup of egg whites, your favorite berries for the blackberries.
Intro
These are true muffins – thousands of miles distant from the border where muffins become cupcakes. I sometimes wonder about amping up the flavors, but I always decide not to. There’s something cool about discovering the orange, rather than having it spelled out for you. There’s something equally enjoyable about having the spices arrive as scent perhaps even more than flavor. I especially love that the nuts get toasted in the baking process. Encountering them as a topping instead of inside the muffin accents their flavor.
Social Learning
Tips, Tricks, and Ideas
Instead of a silicone tin, you can use a greased metal tin, or paper liners.
Use the extra minced peel in cookies, cakes, or cooked into oatmeal.
You can replace the blackberries with any other berries, but if you do, I suggest something tart. This muffin’s flavor takes well to tartness.
Outro
If you’re looking for a muffin that doesn’t seem to be a cupcake in disguise, but instead seems to be something you could convince yourself is good for you, you might want to give these a try.
Blackberry Hazelnut Spice Muffins
Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! unless otherwise credited. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. References: “Basic Muffins,” in How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman. (New York: Macmillan, 1998), 249. Thank you, Kesor. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #15 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.
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I like muffins that aren’t cupcakes. These sound great.
Thank you!
They sure look GREAT and would be great for breakfast or afternoon snack.
Thanks, Angie!
I love the flavor of blackberries but hate the seeds. This recipe sounds delicious, now if I can just figure a way to keep the blooming seeds out of it!!
Gotcha. You could cook down the berries, force them through a sieve, and swirl in the deseeded puree. 🙂
I’m not normally a huge fan of muffins, but these ones look and sound splendid and inviting! Loving the combination of spices, too.
Thank you, Ben!
MMMMMMmmmmm. I love all of these flavors – crystallized ginger, hazelnuts, and berries! What’s not to love?
Right? Thanks!
Ooh these look delicious.
Thank you!
Brilliant, we love hazelnut but never thought to pair it with fruit this way. I like muffins because I can pretend that some of them aren’t cupcakes lol! I’ll be making these beauties! Thanks for a great recipe.
I know what you mean! Sometimes is’t hard to tell the difference! But these muffins are very muffiny.
Wow – this is a combination I would never have imagined. But, now that you mention it – YUM! I wish my aunt was alive – she was the queen of muffins and I know these would have been in her oven immediately!
Thanks, David!
I can tell from the ingredients Jeff that these are really special to eat. I am intrigued by just the egg whites being added, and love that you have minced ginger in there. We are gingerholics in this house. I am not supposed to eat nuts, except walnuts which are softer, which I think would also be ok. Looking forward to baking these, thanks so much.
You’re welcome!
Look delicious. I had blackberry plants for several years but no one in the family enjoyed them except me so I gave them to a friend. I do have a bounty of raspberry though.
Raspberries would be just as delicious!
There is nothing like a good homemade muffin with berries. I love the way they bleed into the muffin. This combination sounds delicious!
Thanks, Judee!
I love muffins! They look very delicious 🙂
Thank you, Lonna!
Nice muffins, I would love one for my breakfast!
Wish I could send one to you!
Hey there! These muffins sound like a real treat, especially with the subtle hints of orange and spices. I totally get what you mean about the joy of discovering those flavors without them being overly pronounced. Plus, toasting the nuts as a topping? Genius move!
Thanks, Raymund!
There are so many things to love about this recipe, Jeff! For starters, I like the crystallized ginger that you snuck in there. You’ve talked about this in the past, and it’s inspired me to start including bits of crystallized ginger in some of my baking projects. So fun! Second, hazelnuts. Thanks for giving these downtrodden nuts some extra love! Hazelnuts always get overlooked in favor of the more famous nuts, but they are delicious in their own right. Now I want a muffin. This muffin. With extra blackberries.
Thanks, David! GMTA!
yummy!!!!