Apricot

Apricot Oat Muffins

by:
April 26, 2017
4.8
4 Ratings
Apricot Oat Muffins
Photo by James Ransom
  • Makes 8 large muffins
Author Notes

This was my favorite flavor combo at my first bakery job - and still one of my favorite muffins ever! The glaze gets applied once before and once after baking and makes the most glorious caramel-y surface on the muffins. I use large, freestanding baking cups to get a more cafe-style muffin - you can purchase them at baking supply stores or online, but this recipe works just fine baked in a regular muffin pan, too - just cut the baking time down by about 3-5 minutes.
—Erin Jeanne McDowell

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • Maple Butter Glaze
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 3 tablespoons good maple syrup
  • pinch salt
  • Muffins
  • 2 1/4 cups (301 g) all purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup (74 g) old fashioned oats
  • 1 tablespoon (12 g) baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon (3 g) baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon (2 g) fine sea salt
  • 1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slighly
  • 1 cup (198 g) granulated sugar
  • 2 large (113 g) eggs, at room temperasture
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 cup (226 g) buttermilk, at room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped dried apricots
Directions
  1. Make the glaze: in a small pot, melt the butter. Stir in the maple and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 1 minute. Stir in the salt. Set aside.
  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place 8 freestanding paper baking cups on a baking sheet (see headnote).
  3. In a small bowl, whisk the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to combine.
  4. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter and sugar to combine. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well to incorporate. Beat in the vanilla extract. 
  5. Add the flour mixture and mix well to combine (I usually switch to a silicone spatula at this point). 
  6. Add the buttermilk and mix until fully incorporated. Fold in the apricots.
  7. Divide the batter between the baking cups - filling about 2/3 of the cup. Brush the surface generously with the glaze.
  8. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (or with a few moist crumbs), 17-20 minutes. Brush the tops of the muffins with the remaining glaze. 
  9. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
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  • Pam
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    DollyD4992
  • StaceyR
    StaceyR
  • Caroline May
    Caroline May
Erin Jeanne McDowell
I always have three kinds of hot sauce in my purse. I have a soft spot for making people their favorite dessert, especially if it's wrapped in a pastry crust. My newest cookbook, Savory Baking, came out in Fall of 2022 - is full of recipes to translate a love of baking into recipes for breakfast, dinner, and everything in between!

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4 Reviews

Pam
Pam July 8, 2023
Made these today and they were excellent! My package of dried apricots had only one cup so I lowered the quantities of all the ingredients by 1/3. Ended up with 12 normal-sized muffins. Perfect! I also added a little unsweetened shredded coconut and a tiny amount of white chocolate chips.
 
DollyD4992
DollyD4992 February 10, 2022
Erin these are amazing! I made the mistake of allowing a friend to use my kitchen and my professional appliances (spiral mixer...) at Christmas to make stollen. Unsupervised. She got the wild notion to grind my stash of Montmorency cherries for inclusion. It didn't work as the cherries turned into a ball of cherry paste. I kept the ball with the notion of finding a way to salvage this expensive ingredient....and then lightning struck while watching your alternative flour video where you featured these muffins. I sliced the cherry ball into 1/4" slices and then 1/4" chunks, tossed them in some of the flour and added in place of apricots. I have to confess, I'm a boozy baker and subbed half of the vanilla for rum. The salty caramel Maple glaze, cherries and a hint of rum....HEAVEN! Thank you so much. I enjoy your delightful style and genius!
 
StaceyR
StaceyR February 1, 2022
I saw your video on Facebook where you substituted whole wheat pastry flour for the all-purpose flour, and I want to do this as well. Do you sub by weight or volume, or is the difference too small to worry about? Looking forward to making these!
 
Caroline M.
Caroline M. January 23, 2019
These came out really well, absolutely delicious, but I did make a number of subs! For a start, I didn’t have maple syrup, so I made a glaze out of the butter, a squeeze of fresh orange juice and dark brown sugar. I didn’t have enough apricots so I made up the amount with figs, and I had a half a green apple sitting on the counter, so I chopped that up small and added it into the dried fruit. Oh yeah, and that half an orange, that I squeezed into the glaze, was looking at me reproachfully, so I grated the zest and put it in with the fruit. Then the flour! I swopped in about 50 g wholemeal flour for the all purpose and I had some apple flour that I bought because it sounded delicious, but hadn’t got around to using it yet - I bunged in about 30 g of that (reduced the all purpose flour accordingly). I added about a tsp of baking powder, to allow for the heaviness of the wholemeal. I never have buttermilk - I used about 200 ml plain yogurt topped up with milk. I reduced the sugar to 120 g. I know a lot of people would scoff and say that this is a totally different recipe, but I want to encourage new and not-very-confident cooks that you can use a recipe as a starting point and put your own stamp on it and also, if you don’t have certain ingredients, you can usually sub quite successfully.