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 vegetable oil (60ml), you may substitute canola oil or other neutral cooking oil
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter melted (57g)
- 1 cup granulated sugar (200g)
- 1 large egg + 1 large egg white room temperature preferred
- ½ cup buttermilk (120ml)
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour (220g)
- 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups blueberries (210g) (see note)
Filling
- 8 oz cream cheese (brick) softened (226g)
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar (67g)
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Streusel Topping
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup brown sugar firmly packed (50g)
- 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.
- Add sugar, egg, and egg white and whisk very well until combined.
- Add buttermilk and vanilla extract and whisk to combine.
- In a separate, medium-sized, bowl whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and 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.
Filling
- Combine softened cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract and stir until smooth and well-combined. Set aside.
Streusel
- Whisk together flour, brown sugar, and 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.
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
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.
Jane C
Hi Sam. I have a question about this Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffin recipe. The printed recipe says to preheat oven to 375°; but in your video you say to preheat oven to 350°. Which is it? And I hafta say that your strawberry muffins are fabulous!!! Thanks for your time.
Sam
Hi Jane! It’s always best to follow the written recipe. Sometimes I misspeak and don’t catch it until it’s way too late. I’m glad you enjoyed the strawberry muffins and I hope you like these just as much. 🙂
Roz Gilliland
Hi Sam
Hello from New Zealand and a huge thank you so for posting this fabulous recipe. This is now my go to best ever never fail muffin recipe…always makes me look good. Happy days Roz
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much, Roz! 🙂
NanaZ
Can fresh strawberries be used in place of fresh blueberries?
Sam
Yup, that should be fine! Enjoy 🙂
RP
Can I substitute with Almond flour
Sam
Unfortunately I do not think this recipe will work with almond flour.
Kendall Pegues
So good! Quick and easy as well 🙂
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much, Kendall! 🙂
Rebecca
Can this be made in a 9by13 pan for 30/35 min?
Sam
Hi Rebecca! I haven’t tried it so I’m not sure how it would turn out. If you do try it I would love to know how it goes. 🙂
Bruce
Hi, Rebecca,
I just made it in a 9×13 pan (lined with non-stick foil, as I always do). I used 2 cups of blueberries and doubled the streusel recipe. When putting it into the pan, I kept back about 1 1/2 cups of the batter, then spread the rest into the pan. I spread the cream cheese mixture over that, which went very smoothly, then roughly spread the remaining batter over it, then the streusel, of course. I baked it at 350°F for 50 minutes. It’s delicious. I ate a piece still slightly warm. The texture is lighter than most coffee cakes, and that’s nice.
When I make it again, I think I’ll double the cream cheese filling, because it get spread pretty thin. Sam, please start thinking about perfecting this as a coffee cake. Resist the urge (which I know is strong in you) to use any more than double the streusel, because you want the blueberries and cream cheese to be the stars.
Bruce
I made it as a coffeecake again, using double the cream cheese mixture, and 1 1/2 pints of blueberries (and double streusel, as before). I’m very happy with it now. I had planned to sprinkle my remaining 1/2 pint of blueberries over the cream cheese mixture, but I forgot. They definitely weren’t necessary, but would have been nice. Even with my changes, I still consider it to be Sam’s recipe.
Gio
Everyone loved these so much!!