Healthy and delicious apple muffins naturally sweetened with honey, applesauce, and chopped dates!
Today’s recipe wraps up the apple fest we have been enjoying for the past week. We’ve been feasting on homemade apple fritters, filling up on spiced apple steel cut oats for breakfast, and snacking on sweet apple brownies with maple cream frosting. Not to mention all the cider, applesauce, and dozens of other ways apples have found their way into our meals and snacks.
After a couple of treats like fritters and brownies, it feels good to end with these oatmeal date apple muffins. Because while fritters and brownies are fun and certainly delicious, naturally sweetened muffins are much more likely to be seen in our kitchen and at our table on a weekly basis.
I love the versatility of a muffin and have long since felt the need to add sugar to them to make them tasty. Muffins are in our regular rotation, and not just for breakfast.
If I had to list out reasons why I love muffins so much, I suppose they’d be…
- muffins are quick to make and bake
- it’s easy to include vegetables (like carrot raisin muffins or chocolate zucchini muffins)
- they pair well with natural sweeteners like maple syrup and honey
- they’re perfect for picnics and hikes
- you can freeze a batch and pull them out as needed for lunches, snacks, and early breakfasts
P.S. Many of the ingredients in these oatmeal date apple muffins are on my “Costco staples” list. Honey, oats, dates, cinnamon, vanilla… If you are interested in what else I always pick up at Costco, or in a price list between Costco and Aldi, you can find those here:
I Love Costco…And You Should Too
Costco & Aldi: Which Popular Store Has the Best Prices?
Oatmeal Date Apple Muffins
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 16 minutes
- Total Time: 26 minutes
- Yield: 12 muffins 1x
Description
Healthy and delicious apple muffins naturally sweetened with honey, applesauce, and chopped dates!
Ingredients
- 2 C flour
- 1 C oats
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 Tbsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 C applesauce
- 1/4 C honey
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 C chopped apple
- 1/2 C chopped dates
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl (flour through baking soda). Whisk until blended. Combine the wet ingredients (applesauce through vanilla) in a large liquid measuring cup. Whisk until blended. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir just until no streaks of flour remain.
- Stir in the chopped apples and dates. Scoop the muffin batter into the cups of a greased muffin pan.
- Bake in preheated oven for about 16 minutes, until muffins are cooked through.
Notes
*These muffins freeze really well. Simply reheat in oven or in the microwave for one minute.
Check out these other delicious apple recipes!
Yes, these muffins are heavy and it’s better if you have a glass of milk with them. 🙂 But they’re kind of supposed to be! Oils/fats have been omitted and substituted with applesauce. I’ve done that for years with muffins and spice cake. You can replace 1/2 cup of the applesauce with oill of you a more traditional texture, in my opinion. We made them as written.
1/2 cup diced apple equaled 1 small, peeled apple for me. The dates I couldn’t taste unfortunately, but they did add to the sweetness which was important, as these are not very sweet. All in all, we’re gobbling them up. It’s just a matter of what type of homemade muffin you’re used to.
★★★★
Great tip on how to get muffins not to stick. This recipe looks fabulous! My son loves apples and cinnamon AND baking, so we are going to have to try this soon. It reminds me of a recipe I used to make with my mom when I was little that I called “Applesauce Muffins”. I never use liners for my muffins. I just spray the pan, and the muffins don’t create extra garbage with the liners. My son is on a huge muffin kick right now and this came at the perfect time! I was wondering what to do with the “leftover” buttermilk I had in the frig. These muffins will do the trick. Thanks for sharing!
i wish i would have read the comments before making. i too found them very dry and was suspicious that there was no oil or butter. i baked them in paper cups and most of it stuck to the cups. sorry. alot of good ingredients but a poor result.
I found these a little too heavy for my liking. Loved the idea but if I attempted them again I would certainly add some fat of some description into the mix – possibly buttermilk, Greek yoghurt or even just a quarter cup of good mild cooking oil. The recipe seemed very light on wet ingredients so it wasn’t surprising they were a bit gluggy.
Very nice moist muffin! I cut the cinnamon spice in half. It’s filling an even satisfies my sweet tooth!
★★★★★