Easy Apple Butter Muffins

Buckle up, friends, because these apple cinnamon muffins are about to be your new autumnal BFFs.

You'll need the usual suspects for this muffin batter (flour, sugar, salt, baking powder/soda) plus a healthy dose of our favorite cozy fall spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, etc) and a big scoop of our favorite homemade apple butter.

We’re also adding a quick crumb topping (just butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and flour) to these apple muffins for some extra texture.

This recipe is simple enough for a lazy weekend breakfast, but impressive enough for your next holiday brunch (kicking off Thanksgiving or Christmas with a batch of cozy apple spice muffins? YES, PLEASE).

Choose your apple butter

We developed this recipe to work with both our original stovetop apple butter recipe and this slow cooker version. You can use fresh, refrigerated, or previously frozen apple butter (so if there's a jar hiding in the back of your freezer, you can definitely defrost it and use it here!)

This recipe has also been tested with store bought apple butter and plain ol' applesauce. It's pretty forgiving, so use what you have on hand!

How to make apple muffins

These homemade apple muffins have three main steps:

1. Make the crumb topping. Mix room temperature butter with brown sugar, cinnamon, and flour to form your crumble topping. Set this aside until you’re ready to bake!
2. Mix the dry ingredients. Mix all of your dry ingredients and spices together in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the wet ingredients. Whisk some melted butter, apple butter, eggs, and vanilla together in a small bowl or measuring cup, then stir this mixture into your dry ingredients until you have a smooth batter. Then just assemble, bake, and enjoy!

Pro tip: Use a kitchen scale!

Measuring flour by volume (with cups) is notoriously unreliable: everyone measures a cup of flour a little bit differently, so it’s easy to accidentally use too much (which results in dry, dense muffins!)

But when you measure flour with a kitchen scale (using gram measurements) you measure flour perfectly every time, ensuring a light, moist muffin (or cake! or cookie! or any baked good!) So if you have a kitchen scale, please use it!

No kitchen scale? Measure your flour with the scoop and level method for best results!

Swaps and substitutions

These apple crumble muffins are fairly forgiving - dial up the flavor and make them your own! Some of our favorite riffs and adjustments:

• Use store bought apple butter or applesauce instead of homemade apple butter if you like! We’ve tested this recipe with our stovetop and slow cooker apple butter recipes, as well as with Eden Organic Apple Butter and store-bought applesauce.
• Drizzle a cream cheese glaze over these muffins! Whisk a bit of softened cream cheese with powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and a few teaspoons of milk to form a thin glaze.
• For extra texture, fold chopped walnuts or pecans into the batter before baking! You can also fold in chopped apples, pears, or peaches here.
• Swap the melted butter in the batter for liquid coconut oil, vegetable oil, or canola oil. You can also use solid coconut oil instead of room temperature butter for the crumble topping if you like!

A Few FAQs