levain bakery blueberry muffins

About These Levain Bakery Blueberry Muffins

This bakery style blueberry muffin recipe is based on the blueberry muffin recipe from famed New York City bakery, Levain Bakery! Although the bakery is most known for their thick and gooey cookies, I’ve always preferred their stunning blueberry muffins.

Levain Bakery blueberry muffins are known for their extra wide and tall muffin tops. The muffin tops have a unique, craggy surface sparkling with sugar. The bakery doesn’t use muffin liners to show off each muffin’s incredibly moist, fluffy, and blueberry-studded crumb.

And now you can make them at home with my copycat Levain Bakery blueberry muffin recipe!

For more delicious, bakery-style homemade muffin recipes, check out Hummingbird High‘s Muffin Recipe collection! Popular recipes include these Small Batch Blueberry Muffins (which are a small batch version of these muffins!), The Best Banana Cinnamon Muffins, and Bakery Style Snickerdoodle Muffins.

levain bakery blueberry muffins

Ingredients and Substitutions

Now that I’ve convinced you to make Levain Bakery blueberry muffins at home, let’s talk about some key ingredients and any potential substitutions:

Ingredient Sources and Substitutions

  • All-Purpose Flour. You can use a 1-1 gluten free all purpose flour replacer to make the recipe gluten free. I like Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour or King Arthur Flour Gluten Free All Purpose Flour.

  • Almond Meal or Flour. I’m pretty sure the original Levain Bakery blueberry muffin recipe doesn’t use almond meal or flour in its batter. But I like using it in these muffins for added flavor and protein. In a pinch, you can omit it entirely from the recipe and reduce the Bake Time by 2-3 minutes. Either almond meal or flour works in the recipe (they’re basically the same thing).

  • Kosher Salt. Kosher salt is the best salt for baking recipes. But you can replace the kosher salt in the recipe with table salt. Just use half the amount listed in the recipe when you do!

  • Whole Milk. Use whole milk for the most flavorful muffins. Skim and low-fat milks work in a pinch, but result in less flavorful muffins. You can also use a plant-based milk like almond, coconut, oat, or soy. Just note that the muffins might end up tasting like whatever milk you use.

  • Fresh Blueberries. If possible, use fresh blueberries. Frozen blueberries make the muffins stick in the pan!

  • Nonstick Baking Spray: Nonstick baking spray is similar to nonstick cooking spray. However, it typically includes flour mixed into the fat/oil of the spray. The flour helps prevents baked goods from sticking to the pan. I use Bak-Klene ZT All Purpose Release Spray. Avoid using a baking spray made with butter, coconut oil, or shortening—these don’t release bundt cakes as easily!
levain bakery blueberry muffins

Let’s Talk About Those Blueberry Muffin Tops

Because so much sugar is sprinkled on top of each muffin, their tops WILL spread generously and beyond the space of each muffin cavity. That means that if you fill every muffin cavity in the pan, their tops will spread, touch each other, and stick to one another. Getting them out of the pan will be a near impossible task, and cause many of them to break. It’s important to leave space between each one!

This method was confirmed by Levain’s Instagram account too. In addition to preventing the muffin tops from sticking and breaking, leaving every other cavity empty allows more heat and air to circulate between the full cavities. This leads to more browning (you’ll notice that Levain’s blueberry muffin is pretty brown) and doming in the oven (as high heat makes muffins dome better).

levain bakery blueberry muffins

Best Recipe Tips

What You Need To Make The Muffins

  • For this recipe, tools are important. You’ll need two muffin tins, a 1-tablespoon OR a 3-tablespoon cookie dough scoop, and an offset spatula (preferably with a short, metal blade). The cookie dough scoops are for filling each cavity with muffin batter—to get tall domes, you’ll need to fill each one with SIX tablespoons of batter. It works best if you’re precise. Anything more will cause the muffins to overflow, and anything less will result in squat muffins. You’ll then need the offset spatula to “unstick” the wide muffin tops from the pan.

Spraying The Muffin Pan

  •  Use cooking spray to spray the muffin tin in order to turn the muffins out of the pan easily and quickly. To make it work, you’ll need to spray the inside of each cavity with a GENEROUS amount of cooking spray. You’ll be uncomfortable with the amount of spray used. You’ll also need to spray the outer border around the cavities. And FYI—butter won’t work, and will cause the muffins to stick to the pan. Use cooking spray!!!

Resting The Muffin Batter

  • The recipe instructs you to rest the blueberry muffin recipe for one hour at room temperature. Technically, this step is optional. You can bake the batter immediately after making and end up with some pretty damn good muffins. But if you want super domed muffins with seriously tall tops, rest the batter for an hour! This will allow the flour to hydrate and absorb the liquids in the batter more fully, leading to taller domes.
  • Don’t stick the batter in the fridge—chilled batter will cause the muffins to stick in their cavities. In fact, make sure ALL your ingredients are at room temperature before using in the recipe. Again, this is one of the secrets to super tall blueberry muffin tops.

Baking The Muffins

  • If you have a convection oven, now is the time to use it! When I was researching muffin recipes for #weeknightbakingbook, I discovered that muffins dome really well when first baked at a high temperature like 425℉. Doing so encourages the baking powder in the batter to react faster, causing the muffins to rise more quickly in the oven. These recipes then instruct you to lower the oven temperature to 350℉ to prevent the muffins from burning and drying out.

    It’s a lot to keep track of, and I found it hard to imagine that the pros at Levain Bakery doing that sort of fussy tinkering in a busy setting. So instead, I baked the muffins at 400℉ and found that it worked just as well, but found that it worked even better on the convection setting (as the convection fan was more effective in getting heat evenly and consistently between the muffin tin cavities).
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Get the Recipe: Levain Bakery Blueberry Muffins

Prep: 5 minutes
Cook: 20 minutes
Bake Time: 18 minutes
Servings: 9 muffins
Author: Michelle Lopez
(4.93 stars) 88 reviews
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Ingredients

For the Levain Bakery Blueberry Muffins

  • 2 cups (9 ounces or 255 grams) all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup (1.75 ounces or 50 grams) almond meal or almond flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½ cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) whole milk, at room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1 cup (7 ounces or 198 grams) granulated sugar
  • ½ cup (4 ounces or 113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 2 ½ cups (13 ounces or 369 grams) fresh blueberries, at room temperature

For the Garnish

  • 9 teaspoons granulated sugar

Instructions
 

  • Mix the dry ingredients, then mix the wet ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, almond meal, baking powder, and salt. In a small liquid measuring cup, whisk together the milk and the vanilla.
  • Cream the sugar and butter, then add the eggs. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugar and butter. Beat on medium-high until light, fluffy, and doubled in volume, 2 to 3 minutes, using a rubber spatula to scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl as necessary.
    Reduce the mixer to low and add the eggs one at a time, adding the next egg only after the previous one is fully incorporated, scraping down the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition.
  • Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the wet ingredients. With the mixer still on low, add the the dry ingredients in three equal parts, alternating with the wet ingredients in two parts. Beat until just combined, then scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl once more, then beat on low for an additional 30 seconds.
  • Add the blueberries. Take ½ cup of the blueberries and crush them with your hands so they are juicy; add to the batter and increase the mixer speed to high for 5 to 10 seconds to encourage the berries to release their juices even more.
    Immediately reduce the mixer to low and add the rest of the berries, mixing until incorporated evenly throughout the batter, another 30 seconds.
  • Rest the batter. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hour.
  • While the batter is resting, prep the oven and pan.While the batter is resting, position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 400℉ using the convect setting (if possible).
    Prepare two muffin tins by spraying the inside and border of every other cavity in the muffin tin generously with cooking spray.
  • Portion the muffin batter into the muffin pan. Use a 1-Tablespoon or 3-Tablespoon cookie dough scoop to fill each sprayed cavity with 6 tablespoons of the batter. The first muffin tin will have six cavities filled, whereas the second muffin will will have three cavities filled.
    For the second muffin tin, you'll need to pour water into every other cavity to mimic the placement of the batter in the first muffin tin. Sprinkle the top of each cavity, aiming for the batter and avoiding the pan, with 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar each.
  • Bake the muffins. Bake each muffin tin for 18 to 22 minutes, or until the muffins are domed and golden brown around the edges. A skewer inserted into the center of a muffin should come out with a few crumbs attached.
  • Cool the muffins. Cool the muffins in their muffin tin on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then use an offset spatula to run underneath the edges of the blueberry muffin tops to prevent them from sticking in the pan. Be careful to just run the offset spatula under the edges—you don't want to accidentally cut into the muffin bottom and decapitate the muffin from its top!
    After unsticking the muffin tops, keep cooling the muffins in the tins completely to room temperature. DO NOT TRY AND TURN THE MUFFINS OUT WHILE THEY ARE STILL WARM. Because these muffins are so top-heavy, you'll run the risk of accidentally pulling the tops and bottoms apart if the cake is still warm! Wait until they are cooled completely before turning them out of the pan. Run the offset spatula underneath each muffin top once more and gently tilt the muffin upwards to turn it out of the pan.
  • Serve and store. Serve at room temperature. The muffins are best on the day that they're made, but can be individually wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature for up to 2 days.
Did you make this recipe?Please leave a star rating and review in the form below. I appreciate your feedback, and it helps others, too!
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