Tender vegan muffins filled with caramelized strawberries and topped with a crisp oat cinnamon streusel. These bakery-style muffins are easy to make and are one of those treats that are wholesome enough for breakfast but so delicious you'll crave them for dessert!
Thank you to Stahlbush Island Farms for sponsoring this post. As always, all opinions are my own.
These vegan roasted strawberry muffins are:
- easy to make
- bursting with flavor
- made with EXTRA strawberries
- moist and fluffy
- generously topped with crisp cinnamon oat crumble
- unassumingly vegan, eggless, and dairy-free!
How to Make Roasted Strawberry Muffins with Oat Streusel
No fancy equipment is needed for this vegan strawberry muffin recipe despite them being a little more dressed up!
- Roast the strawberries.
- Mix oat streusel ingredients in a small bowl.
- Whisk the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- Mix the wet ingredients together in a medium bowl.
- Combine the wet and dry ingredients.
- Fold in the roasted strawberries.
- Spoon the batter into a prepared muffin tin.
- Top each muffin with oat streusel and bake!
The tender, fruit filled muffins are such a nice contrast to the crisp, cinnamon oat crumble on top. This recipe calls for a generous amount of streusel, no skimping here! Be sure to press the oat streusel into the batter of each muffin so that it sticks to the tops during baking.
How (and Why) to Roast Strawberries for Muffins
Roasting strawberries is pretty simple and will leave your home smelling incredible as the juices caramelize!
But before we dive into how to roast strawberries, you may be wondering why roast them at all? While fresh strawberries are lovely in muffins, you're limited by how many you can add before they make your muffins wet and soggy.
Roasting causes a lot of the strawberry juices to evaporate so the berries are reduced in size. Reducing their size means you can add more of them into your strawberry muffins which increases the strawberry flavor! The flavor is also intensified when roasting, and each strawberry becomes a little flavor bomb. I used Stahlbush Island Farms' frozen strawberries - they're field ripened so they're really flavorful and sweet.
Toss the strawberries with turbinado sugar and vanilla extract, then roast in a preheated oven for about 25 minutes.
Turbinado sugar is a light brown, coarse, unrefined sugar so it still contains the flavorful molasses. It's really nice tossed on roasting strawberries because it intensifies the caramelized flavors. If you don't have any, you can use 2 tablespoons of brown sugar.
How to Get Tall Domed Muffin Tops
Despite cafes and bakeries having uniquely shaped muffin tins to create a beautiful big dome on their muffins, there's something you can do at home to get this look! And it's not just a look, is it? It's also the texture - homemade muffins often lack that textural contrast of tender inside with a slightly thicker caramelized outer bit on the cap (my favorite part!)
There's a few things you can do to create your own tall muffin caps at home:
1) Bake at a high temperature.
Most muffins are baked at 350°F. By increasing the oven temperature just 50 degrees to 400°F, you're going to a get a more rapid burst of baking powder activation. Baking powder works once it heats up - it creates gas bubbles in the batter which causes things to rise. If the batter rises faster before it has a chance to set, you'll have a taller muffin.
The higher temperature also creates more caramelization on the outside of the muffin, so you get that bakery-style bit of crunch on the outside with the tender, soft crumb inside.
2) Grease the rim of the muffin cavities.
This is important so that when the batter rises up and expands over the rim, the muffin doesn't stick.
3) Use every second muffin cavity.
Home muffin tins have cups that are closer together so when the batter expands over the sides a bit, the muffins are going to touch each other. When the muffins do this, their caps won't be as round or as caramelized on the sides.
If you only have one 12-cup muffin tin, you can bake the muffins in two batches.
4) Fill your muffin caps almost to the top.
If there isn't enough batter in the cup to rise above the rim, you won't have much of a muffin cap.
And For the Most Serious Muffin Cap Lovers:
You can actually buy a home version of bakery style muffin tin to get perfectly shaped muffin crowns. Totally unnecessary but pretty fun!
The cups are shaped differently - the tops flare out a bit so the batter is guided into a cap shape as it bakes. I have this one and it makes beautiful muffins. The bases are much narrower than normal muffin tins so you get smaller muffins. According to my 7 year old, they make the "fanciest" muffins. The downside to this is that you can't use standard paper muffin liners because they won't fit.
More Vegan Brunch Baking:
- Brioche Cinnamon Rolls
- Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread
- Triple Chocolate Banana Bread
- Carrot Spice Loaf with Maple Glaze
If you make these Roasted Strawberry Muffins with Oat Streusel, please give them a rating in the recipe card and leave a comment below! Follow along on Instagram where you can tag me in your creations using my recipes! You can also follow me on Pinterest for vegan recipe inspiration and on Facebook. Thank you for reading!
Vegan Roasted Strawberry Muffins with Oat Streusel
Ingredients
For the Roasted Strawberries:
- 20 oz frozen strawberries*, larger ones cut in half (about 3 ½ to 4 cups), may use fresh berries
- 3 tablespoon turbinado sugar**
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Oat Topping:
- 1 cup rolled oats (not quick oats)
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- ⅓ cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 4 tablespoon neutral oil (e.g. avocado, sunflower, etc)
For the Muffins:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup neutral oil (e.g. avocado, sunflower, etc)
- 1 cup unsweetened plant-based milk of choice (e.g. soy)
- 1 ½ tablespoon white or apple cider vinegar
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon almond extract
Instructions
For the Roasted Strawberries:
- Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/gas mark 5.
- Place the strawberries on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with the sugar and vanilla. Toss well to coat, then spread the berries out in a single layer. Roast for 25 minutes, tossing once. Set aside to cool to room temperature. Increase the oven temperature to 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6 while you prepare the muffin batter.
For the Oat Topping:
- In a small bowl, combine the dry ingredients for the oat streusel topping. Pour in the oil, and mix with a fork or your fingers until combined. Set aside.
For the Muffins:
- Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners and lightly grease the top edges of the cups. For rounder caps and even baking, prepare every second cup. If you have two trays, both can be baked at the same time. If you only have one, bake in two batches - the second batch may not rise as high.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a small bowl or 2-cup measuring cup, whisk together the plant-based milk, oil, vinegar, and vanilla and almond extracts. Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mixture, and stir until mostly combined but some flour remains dry. Gently fold in the roasted strawberries. Do not overmix.
- Fill the paper lined muffin cups within ⅛" (0.3 cm)to the top with batter. Top each generously with oat streusel, pressing it gently into the batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean (or a few cooked crumbs.) Place the baking tray on a cooling rack, removing the muffins gently from the baking pan once they are nearly room temperature.
Nutrition Info:
Notes:
This post was originally published on August 14, 2019. It was updated on July 31, 2020 with additional educational content and fresh images.
The Nutrition Information is only an estimate. The accuracy of the Nutrition Information for any recipe on this site cannot be guaranteed.
Post may contain affiliate links which means if you click on the link and make a purchase, I may make a very small percentage in commission on qualifying purchases. There's never any extra cost to you, and I only link to products I actually use and enjoy. Thank you for your support!
Keesa Sung says
These were delicious, I added sliced almonds and substituted almond flour for the AP in the Oat Crumble topping and made the muffins exactly as written.
Crumbs & Caramel says
Thank you for lovely feedback, Keesa! Love the sound of almond in the crumble! ~Bronwyn
Dan Beck says
Hi, Do you roast your strawberries directly on the baking sheet? I used parchment paper, and the strawberries are wet. Is that normal for your recipe? I was trying to make clean up easier.
Crumbs & Caramel says
Hi Dan! While I usually use parchment when baking/roasting, I didn't with this recipe just because I wanted to save any excess juice for another use (easier to pour it off the baking sheet if there was any). That said, the berries should be soft and smaller than they were, but not dehydrated or chewy. Roasting just reduces the amount of water they contain so 1) the berries are more flavorful, and 2) they don't make your muffins soggy. You could either roast them a bit longer, or strain them so you aren't adding too much moisture to the muffins. Hope this works out well for you and that you love the muffins! Let me know if you have any other questions ~ Bronwyn