These 3-Ingredient Blueberry Mini Muffins Will Make You Feel Like a Kid Again

Ever crave something warm and fresh out of the oven — but don't want to tornado through your kitchen getting out 20 ingredients, making a huge mess, and waiting an hour for something to bake, only to have it disappear in mere hours?

It also begs the question: Do you really need all those ingredients when making baked goods? After a little creative thinking, I realized you don't need the traditional eight to 10 ingredients — in fact, you barely need five.

That's how I came up with these simplified Mini Blueberry Oat Muffins. The recipes is in my new cookbook, The Best 3-Ingredient Cookbook, which is all about making recipes easy and fast — and often healthier than their traditional counterparts. This is especially true for the baked goods. Instead of using flour for these recipes, I made my own using old-fashioned rolled oats. Just put the oats in the blender and the oats reach flour consistency. Then you can use this DIY oat flour in various ways. (For example, it's also in this recipe for 3-Ingredient, No-Bake Almond Oat Bites.)

The three main ingredients in this recipe are as follows:

• Old-Fashioned Oats: Pulsed into a flour consistency in the blender, it mixes beautifully with pureed fruit or vegetables, like the applesauce in this recipe. It also provides soluble fiber, which is important because it helps slow the rate at which sugars and fats enter your bloodstream, giving you a steady supply of energy.
• Unsweetened applesauce: Applesauce is sweet on its own, so there's no need to buy a sweetened version. The unsweetened applesauce provides a touch of natural sugar to these oat cups. It's also the wet ingredient (along with olive oil) that combines with your dry pulsed oats.
• Blueberries: Whether you use fresh or frozen and thawed, these gorgeously hued berries add more sweetness and mouth feel. They're also an excellent source of vitamin K, the antioxidant vitamin C, and the mineral manganese. They're also brimming with antioxidants called anthocyanidins, which are found in food that are blue or red in color. (Read about all the other benefits of blueberries.)

In addition to the three ingredients above, this recipe includes two easy-to-find pantry ingredients that you likely already have at home: salt and olive oil. These mini oat muffins use a touch of olive oil in the batter to add a bit of healthy fat and a sprinkle of salt to balance the sweetness of the fruit.

Easy Mini Blueberry Oat Muffins

Makes: 12 muffins

Cook time: 18 minutes

Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 cup large-flake (old-fashioned) rolled oats
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/2 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen and thawed
• 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for the mini muffin pan
• 1/8 tsp salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Brush the mini muffin pan with some oil.
3. Place the oats in a blender or food processor and pulse until the oats reach a flour consistency, about 1 minute. Add the applesauce, olive oil and salt and blend until smooth.
4. Place the oat mixture in a medium bowl and gently fold in the blueberries.
5. Evenly divide the batter among the muffin cups. Tap the muffin pan onto the counter a few times to get rid of any bubbles in the batter. Fill any unused muffin cups with water.
6. Bake until the muffins are golden brown on top and a tested inserted in the center comes out clean, about 18 minutes.

Copyright Toby Amidor, The Best 3-Ingredient Cookbook: 100 Fast & Easy Recipes for Everyone. Robert Rose Books, October 2020. Photo courtesy of Ashley Lima. All Rights Reserved.