These streusel-topped blueberry cream cheese muffins are super soft, packed with plump juicy berries, and are filled with a cream cheese surprise. Ready in under 30 minutes! My recipe includes a how-to video!
The Best Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffins
Blueberry cream cheese muffins aren’t your average blueberry muffins, though they may seem that way from the outside.
Sure they’re soft, fluffy and full of fat juicy berries, but they have a rich and decadent cheesecake-esque surprise.
This recipe is one of the oldest on the blog and was one of my first popular recipes (for obvious reason). I published it 7 years ago, way back when Zach and I were in the midst of planning our wedding, and it was in dire need of a refresh. Some small (very small) tweaks were in order, a photo re-shoot was desperately needed, and a how-to video has been added to the recipe card. Let’s get to it!
What You Need
Let’s go over just a few of the ingredients:
- Oil & Butter. If you’ve made my vanilla cake or chocolate chip muffins, you already know why I like to use a blend of oil and butter in many of my recipes. The butter adds flavor, oil adds moisture. You get the best of both worlds by using both. For the oil, I use canola but any neutral cooking oil (like vegetable oil) would be fine.
- Eggs. You’ll use one whole egg and one egg white. The extra white helps to make the muffins fluffier and adds a bit of lift to them.
- Buttermilk. This helps to make the muffins tender, moist, soft, and adds a subtle tangy flavor that plays nicely with the blueberries. If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can make your own buttermilk substitute (see the recipe card and follow the link in the ingredients). You may notice there’s no baking soda in this recipe and typically baking soda and buttermilk are used together. It’s not an accident that I left it out of this recipe and it’s not needed.
- Corn Starch. One of my favorite “secret” ingredients in so many baked goods. This helps to make the muffins soft and tender.
- Blueberries. I use fresh blueberries, but frozen would work. You do not need to thaw, but keep in mind frozen blueberries often leave purple streaks through your muffin batter. This isn’t a problem for taste, just something to be aware of!
- Cream Cheese. This is for the cheesecake filling. Use full-fat/brick-style cream cheese for best results.
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
Making The Muffins & Filling
- Whisk together wet ingredients in a large bowl. I always start by whisking the oil and melted butter, first, just in case the butter is hot. Mixing it with the room temperature oil will help cool it down, bring things to a uniform temperature, and make sure none of your other ingredients are affected by the heat.
- In a separate bowl whisk together the dry ingredients and then add them to the wet ingredients. Gently fold the ingredients together with a spatula (you never want to over-mix muffins or they’ll be dense, so take care). Once you have the ingredients mostly (but not completely) combined….
- Add the blueberries and stir until just combined. Be careful not to overdo it!
- Once your muffin batter is prepared, make your cream cheese filling by stirring together softened cream cheese, granulated sugar, and vanilla extract.
You’re almost done, but these muffins wouldn’t be complete without a light sprinkling of crumbly, buttery streusel.
How to Make Streusel
I have a super simple way of making streusel and will be sharing this in its own post soon. While many recipes require you to use a pastry cutter to cut the butter into your mixture, I start with melted butter. It’s so much simpler and yields a more tasty topping!
To make it:
- Stir flour, sugar and salt together.
- Drizzle melted butter over top and toss everything together with a fork. Don’t stir with a spoon or over-stir or the mixture could become pasty, you want to just toss the butter into the mixture so all of the dry ingredients are moistened and clumpy (clumpy streusel is the best!).
Assembling The Muffins
- Fill 15 muffin cups ⅔ of the way full with the muffin batter.
- Use a spoon the make a crater in the center of each muffin and fill this with 2 teaspoons of cream cheese mixture.
- Top with a heaping spoonful of batter and use a knife to swirl together the cream cheese and muffin batter with a knife. You may not completely cover the cream cheese; that’s OK!
- Top each muffin with a sprinkling of streusel and then bake!
Frequently Asked Questions
This most likely is a result of the muffin batter being over-mixed. While the ingredients should be completely combined, they should be just combined and you should always mix by hand.
Over-baking is another culprit, make sure your oven isn’t running hot!
These muffins are filled with a rich, heavy cream cheese filling. This will naturally weigh down the airy muffins, so while they will appear puffy when they first come out of the oven they will naturally deflate and sink as they cool. Totally normal (think of black bottom cupcakes, same idea!)
However, they shouldn’t be completely deflated or sunken. If they are, they may be under-baked or your baking powder could be old or expired.
This often happens if you leave your muffins in the muffin tins for too long after they’ve baked. After the muffins have baked and cooled in the tin for 5-10 minutes, remove them from the muffin tin to a cooling rack. The easiest way to do this is to use a knife to gently pry them out of the tin (careful, they’ll still be hot!).
More Recipes You Might Like
Enjoy!
Let’s bake together! Make sure to check out the how-to VIDEO in the recipe card!
Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffins
Ingredients
Muffins
- ¼ cup (60 ml) vegetable oil you may substitute canola oil or other neutral cooking oil
- 4 Tablespoons (57 g) unsalted butter melted
- 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 large egg white room temperature preferred
- ½ cup (120 ml) buttermilk
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cup (220 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups (210 g) blueberries (see note)
Filling
- 8 oz (226 g) cream cheese (brick) softened
- ⅓ cup (67 g) granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Streusel Topping
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup (50 g) brown sugar firmly packed
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 2 Tablespoons butter (melted but not too hot)
Recommended Equipment
- Paper Muffin Liners
Instructions
Muffins
- Preheat oven to 375F (190C) and line a muffin tin with paper liners.
- In a large bowl, stir together oil and butter.¼ cup (60 ml) vegetable oil, 4 Tablespoons (57 g) unsalted butter
- Add sugar, egg, and egg white and whisk very well until combined.1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar, 1 large egg + 1 large egg white
- Add buttermilk and vanilla extract and whisk to combine.½ cup (120 ml) buttermilk, 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- In a separate, medium-sized, bowl whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt.1 ¾ cup (220 g) all-purpose flour, 1 Tablespoon cornstarch, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt
- Add all of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and use a spatula to gently fold ingredients together until mostly combined.
- Add blueberries and stir until batter is just combined and blueberries are well incorporated. Set aside while you prepare the filling and topping.1 ½ cups (210 g) blueberries
Filling
- Combine softened cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract and stir until smooth and well-combined. Set aside.8 oz (226 g) cream cheese (brick), ⅓ cup (67 g) granulated sugar, ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Streusel
- Whisk together flour, brown sugar, and salt.¼ cup all-purpose flour, ¼ cup (50 g) brown sugar, ⅛ teaspoon salt
- Drizzle in melted butter and use a fork to toss ingredients together until combined, no flour/sugar remains unmoistened by the butter, and mixture is clumpy. Don’t over-mix or the streusel will become like a paste, you want it to be clumpy.2 Tablespoons butter
Assembly
- Divide batter into 15 muffin cups, filling each liner ⅔ of the way full.
- Use a spoon to make a crater in the center of each muffin and portion about 2 teaspoons of your cream cheese mixture in the center.
- Top with a heaping spoonful of remaining muffin batter and use a knife to gently swirl together the cream cheese mixture and muffin batter.
- Sprinkle muffins evenly with streusel.
- Transfer to 375F (190C) oven and bake for 25 minutes or muffins are baked through.
- Allow to cool for 10 minutes or so before digging in (the cream cheese filling will be very hot!). Muffins will puff up in the oven, but due to the cream cheese filling they will deflate and maybe even cave in a bit (like a black bottom) as they cool. This is normal!
Notes
Blueberries
You can use frozen (do not thaw) blueberries, but often they leave purple streaks through your batter. Nothing wrong with that, just be aware.Baking In Two Muffin Tins
This recipe makes 15 muffins. Since most muffins tin hold enough batter for only 12 muffins, you can either discard the excess or bake the remaining 3 muffins after the first 12 bake. The second batch will take less time, start checking at 17 minutes. I don’t recommend over-filling the muffin liners, as the batter tends to spread out and flatten on the top, which makes for unattractive muffins.Storing
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 48 hours or in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
This recipe was originally published July 21st 2014. I’ve updated the post to slightly alter and improve the recipe (it was already pretty good as is so only small changes!) and have updated the photos and added a step-by-step video as well.
MichelleGC
You can taste the difference with the egg whites! I really love this recipe. My muffins were huge caps with blueberries galore! Thank you for sharing this recipe, it’s a keeper.
Sam
I am so glad you enjoyed them so much, Michelle! 🙂
Susan
I make these all the time and it’s the only muffin recipe I will use from now on. Everyone loves them. I use jumbo muffin pans. I made them with strawberries the last time and they were delcious.
Sam
I am so glad everyone enjoys them so much, Susan! 🙂
Shelly
Omg!! Amazing! I.actually combined the Best blueberry muffin recipe with the cream cheese one & I can’t stop eating them!!
Sugar Spun Run
I am so glad that you enjoyed the muffins, Shelly! The combo sounds amazing! Thank you for commenting. 🙂
Amanda
Do these need to be kept in the refrigerator??
Sugar Spun Run
If you don’t plan on enjoying within 24 hours I would probably refrigerate in an airtight container. 🙂
Suanna Lezon
These muffins were DELICIOUS!! I had several of them “cave” in the middle. Can you give me suggestions to prevent this next time? I will definitely bake them many more times!!
Sugar Spun Run
I am so glad that you enjoyed the muffins, Suanna! I am sorry to hear that you had several that caved. Most likely this was a result of over-mixing. Over mixing can cause too much air to get into the batter, the air then collapses, and so will your muffin. Another thing that could have caused this was opening the oven door during the early stages of baking before they had set. I hope that helps! 🙂
Patricia Vandyke
Mouth watering and DELICIOUS . I just took these out of the oven and ate 2. Going to drop off to friends so they can enjoy. So moist and yummy. I will make these again and again. 5 star
Wish I could attach photo
Sam
I’m so happy you enjoyed! Unfortunately I don’t have a way to share a photo here BUT you can always tag me @sugarspun_sam or #sugarspunrun on Instagram or share a photo in my Baker’s Club on Facebook!
Maria
Can blueberry pie filling be used instead of fresh?
Sugar Spun Run
I have never tried it, Maria, so I am not certain how it will do. I think that it will be fine, but I’d love to know how it turns out if you try it! 🙂
Kristi
You’re recipes are the yummiest! Absolutely hands down the best. Thank you for sharing
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you so much for the sweet comment, Kristi! I am so glad that you have enjoyed the muffins. Thanks for commenting. 🙂
Whitney E.
I have scoured the Internet for years, truly, looking for a recipe like this in attempt to recreate a muffin sold at a shop in Chapel Hill, NC back in the early 1990s. Heaven! Thank you!!! 🙂
Sugar Spun Run
I am so happy to hear that this muffin recipe exceeded your expectations and you finally found a recipe that brought back so many wonderful memories for you, Whitney! Thank you for commenting. I am glad you loved them! 🙂
Andrea
I can’t wait to make these. I lived in Chapel Hill and went to that muffin shop all the time, and I have tried many recipes but none to even come close. I am so excited to try this recipe!! Thanks
Sugar Spun Run
I hope that you love them, Andrea! Keep me posted. 🙂
Andrea
I just made these wonderful muffins!!
They are exactly like the muffin shop. The texture and flavor are spot on!! Way to go. Thanks so much!!!
Sugar Spun Run
I am so glad that they were such a hit, Andrea! Thanks for trying my recipe. 🙂
Carol Anderson-Farwell
Can frozen blueberries be used ?
Sugar Spun Run
Hi, Carol! Yes, that will be fine. I hope that you enjoy them! 🙂
Abbi
I used frozen blueberries and they all sunk to the bottom since I didn’t coat them in flour. I will definitely let them thaw first and then coat them in the flour mixture.
Loretta
Love these muffins. My husband and grandkids love them too. They want more now. I definitely will be making these again. Five stars.
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you so much for the 5-star review, Loretta! I am so glad the muffins were enjoyed by all. Thank you for commenting. I can’t wait to see what recipe you try next! 🙂
Linda
Best Blueberry muffin I have eaten. My husband and his best friend really enjoy them👍. I put 5 star because they are the best. Thank you!
Sugar Spun Run
Thank you so very much, Linda, for trying my recipe. I am so glad that you enjoyed the blueberry muffins. Thanks for the 5-star review. 🙂
Kim
This is my all time favorite muffin! I make them all the time and have even been told it’s the best muffin ever. I’ve substituted strawberries and it turned out delicious also. It’s a lot of steps but so worth it.
Sugar Spun Run
I am so glad that you have enjoyed the blueberry cream cheese muffins, Kim! The substitution of strawberries sounds delightful as well. Thank you for trying my recipe and for commenting. 🙂
Paula
Hands down the best blueberry cheesecake muffins I’ve ever had. They’re a little labor intensive for muffins, IMO but SO worth it!
I made this recipe as written into 6 jumbo muffins baked at 350 for 37 minutes. This one is a keeper!
Sugar Spun Run
I am so glad that you enjoyed the muffins, Paula! They can be intensive, but totally worth it in the end! I hope that you enjoy! Thanks for commenting. 🙂
Linda
They are delicious, the best I have ever made or eaten . Will be making them again. Thank you for such a good recipe.
Sugar Spun Run
I am so glad that you enjoyed the blueberry cream cheese muffins, Linda! Thank you for commenting. 🙂
Michelle
Delicious! Super easy to make.
Sugar Spun Run
I am so glad that you enjoyed the blueberry cream cheese muffins, Michelle! Thank you for commenting. 🙂