Easy Blueberry Muffins-A Breakfast Staple at Our House

At our house, we love muffins for a quick and easy breakfast.  Running a family business and taking care of 3 kids and a household means quick recipes are favorites around here.  You can even make a few batches and stick some in the freezer for when you are on the run and need a quick breakfast.

I love these muffins since they are so much healthier than breakfast cereal (aka a bowl of sugar) and they also make fantastic snacks for little ones.  I used to buy the box mixes that were advertised as being made with “natural ingredients” but discovered that they still had all kinds of nasty preservatives and artificial flavors in them, which I prefer to avoid. More on my semi-healthiness later.

I’ve been looking for a good muffin recipe for awhile and just recently found this one on the back of a quick oats container, believe it or not.

I don’t know when the last time was that I actually followed a recipe exactly, so here are some of the things I changed up:

• Flour-I used unbleached flour. Feel free to use whole wheat flour instead of some or all of the all-purpose flour. This would probably make it a little healthier. I usually have unbleached all-purpose flour on hand since I’m not really fond of the idea of eating bleach. Blech.
• Sugar-I like to buy the big bag of cane sugar from Sam’s when I’m there. THIS is what I buy. Once again, it’s gotta be better for you than that bleached stuff although sugar isn’t good for you in general.
• Baking Powder-I prefer to use aluminum free baking powder. I mean, who wants aluminum in their food?!
• Eggs-we are fortunate enough to get fresh eggs (hence the green eggs in the picture) from a relative. They taste so much better than store-bought eggs that have been sitting on the shelves forever.
• Milk-I don’t really like to use regular whole milk because I have read about all the hormones and antibiotics that are added to it so I decided to use a mix of organic whole milk and almond milk.  When our budget allows it, I will start getting more raw milk since I’ve read it has so many benefits!
• Oil-I don’t like to use vegetable oil since there is nothing healthy about it at all-unlike what the name implies. Instead, I use coconut oil. After discovering it a few years ago, I have been amazed at all the benefits it has, not only for cooking but also for health, beauty, and personal care.  I prefer to buy organic extra virgin coconut oil in bulk like THIS. Any coconut oil for cooking is better than vegetable oil though so I would use any of the brands from HERE.
• Blueberries-the recipe says fresh but I have used frozen just fine. I actually mixed half frozen and half fresh this time.  I don’t like to waste fresh fruit so if I know we aren’t going to eat it in time, I just stick it in the freezer so we always have some to make muffins.

Without further ado, here is the recipe:

Easy Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins

1 cup quick oats

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. salt

1 egg

½ cup milk

⅓ cup vegetable oil

1 cup fresh blueberries

Directions

Heat oven to 400°F.

Combine dry ingredients in bowl.

Mix egg, milk, and oil into dry ingredients.

Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups with batter ⅔ full.

Bake 18-22 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 12 muffins.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do! I would love to hear what you do for quick and easy breakfasts. I’m always looking for new recipe ideas!

P.S.  I’m still trying to figure out this formatting so sorry it looks wacky. HELP! Any tips appreciated!