These Healthy Pumpkin Oat Muffins are packed with real pumpkin, applesauce, and whole grain oats, making them one of the best healthy muffin recipes for fall!
*I originally posted this recipe in October 2015 and I’m re-sharing it today with some updated photos and a brand new tutorial VIDEO to help my readers make this recipe at home!
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If you’ve been following my blog for awhile you already know how much I love making muffins. They’re a great way to showcase seasonal flavors (like these Lemon Pistachio Muffins, these Raspberry Lemonade Muffins, or even these Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins), and it’s usually pretty quick and easy to throw them together yet make it look like you spent all day slaving away in the kitchen!
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RECIPE VIDEO
Watch the video below to see exactly how I make these healthier muffins. You can find more delicious recipe videos on my YouTube channel.If you made this, share a photo!
Are you trying this recipe? Use the comment form below to share your take; now with support for image uploads and comment voting!
Healthy Pumpkin Oat Muffins
Recipe: Ingredients
- 1 cup pumpkin puree (canned is best)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup rolled oats plus a few tablespoons for sprinkling
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds for sprinkling on before baking
Recipe: Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
- To a large bowl, add the pumpkin, applesauce, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and canola oil. Whisk these ingredients together with a wire whisk until they're combined.
- To the wet ingredients, add the flour, oats, baking soda, salt and spices. Mix the dry ingredients together a little bit with your fingers before using a rubber spatula to fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Don't over-mix here, but stop as soon as you see the flour disappear.
- Spoon the batter evenly into the 12 muffin cups you've prepared with paper liners. Sprinkle a few oats and a few pumpkin seeds onto the top of each muffin before putting them in the oven to bake.
- Bake the muffins for 17-19 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or until the tops lose their shine and they bounce back to the touch.
- Let the muffins cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes before removing them from the tin onto a wire rack to cool completely before enjoying!
Recipe: Notes
Recipe: Nutrition
Notice: Nutrition is auto-calculated, using Spoonacular, for your convenience. Where relevant, we recommend using your own nutrition calculations.
This recipe is awesome!! Thanks so much for posting it. I needed to make them gluten free, so I used oat flour (oats ground up in the blender). They still turned out delicious.
I'm so glad you enjoyed the muffins!! Good to know oat flour works for this recipe! Thanks!!
I thought I had rolled oats, but only have steel cut.. will those work?
No, I’m sorry. Steel cut oats are far too tough for this recipe!
Made these yesterday and they were so easy to make and so delicious. I have a question: would I be able to substiture the pumpkin with mashed bananas or something of a similar consistency to make different flavored muffins?
Glad you enjoyed these muffins! Unfortunately I can’t comment on how the recipe would turn out if you used bananas because I’ve never tried that myself, but I do have a fantastic banana muffin recipe on the blog! You can find it here: https://thebusybaker.ca/best-ever-banana-muffins/
I made these today and they were delicious. I substituted 1/2 cup of white flour for whole wheat.
Also used 1/2 cup of maple syrup instead of the brown sugar because I like my muffins without too much sugar of any kind.Since I don’t like cloves or nutmeg I used 1/4 tsp of cardomon instead.
I will make these again.
Those substitutions sound great! So glad you liked the recipe!
No substitutions. The baking pan was silicone and didn’t need liners or grease to pop out a great little muffin.
The amount of oats in this recipe is more of an add-in ingredient than a base ingredient. It is a pumpkin muffin base. So I’m going to evaluate it like I would a pumpkin muffin with oats added in.
At 19 minutes, the color was blotchy and there was zero spring to the muffin top, however, it had visibly doubled in size. Popped them back in for a grand total of 25 minutes. They found their spring, and I deemed them done. I’ve got a gas oven and an electric, and they both ALWAYS need more time than the recipe says. I can’t blame the altitude, so I just accept it and move on.
They were okay. They looked attractive, so I wanted to love them, but we had no chemistry, you know? Honestly, found them a bit boring. The oats disappear completely under the pumpkin flavor. It made me a bit sad, because I can’t help comparing them to my favorite pumpkin roll, and nothing CAN compare to a good pumpkin roll. I compared them to my favorite pumpkin tea bread recipes, and it just made me want my pumpkin bread. My inner sweet tooth is throwing a temper tantrum, and I’m sorry for that, but I’m not in love with this recipe.
I tried playing with the recipe. Tried adding more oats and some chia seed. THAT WAS A BAD IDEA. Both add-ins were competing for the liquid in the batter, and there just wasn’t enough to spare. They ended up dry, and I still didn’t get any flavor passed the pumpkin. I should have stuck to my usual add in: walnuts. I’m curious about subbing oat flour for the all purpose flour, but not enough to actually buy or grind the oat flour to try it. I still have 18 muffins to eat before I make more bakery, so realistically, I won’t be coming back to this recipe.
Grumble. Grumble. I hate leaving negative reviews. I always feel it was me, not you, and I second guess everything trying to figure out where I went wrong. Like, did you pack the brown sugar? Was the time out of the oven to finish cooking or just to cool? Maybe I really did overcook them. Gah!
Sorry Chrissie. It wasn’t love.
Thanks for your feedback! I’m sorry the recipe wasn’t love at first sight for you 🙂
This is a fantastic recipe! I doubled the recipe and did a few substitutions.
Instead of the brown sugar, I used honey.
I didn’t have enough eggs, so I did the flax with water substitution.
Used coconut oil instead of vegetable oil.
The oatmeal mix I used had ancient grains in it and it worked well too.
Thank you for sharing and creating such a great recipe!!! Would totally make again!
I’m so glad you loved the recipe! Those sound like great substitutions! 🙂
Thanks for this recipe! I made a few substitutions for my preferences, and they still turned out amazing- they tasted like a pumpkin pie! The subs that I made were that I used steel cut oats that I grinned in the blender, added about 2 tbsp of extra apple sauce for extra moisture for the oats,, used olive oil instead of vegetable, halved the amounts of clove and nutmeg and also added chocolate chips, since that’s how I get my kids to eat muffins of any kind. The chocolate chips were not even necessary since these were so perfect already. Will definitely use this recipe again, thanks!
So glad you liked them! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
Yum! Great recipe. I did some modifications as I like to use mashed banana to replace some sugar, so I substituted the apple sauce and about half the sugar with one large banana and they baked really well. I still have some puree left so my next pumpkin project will be your Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls!! Now those look crazy delicious!
So glad you liked them!! Enjoy the cinnamon rolls too!! 🙂
I’m thinking about making these as mini-muffins for my toddler. How should I adjust the baking time? Thanks!
ps- I just found your site and I’m so excited to try a bunch of your recipes!
I’ve never actually made these as mini-muffins, but I’d suggest cutting baking time in half and watching them after that. Use the toothpick test to be sure they’re done!
Hello Chrissie,
Do you have the nutrition info per each muffin? Thanks, very tasty not too sweet and very nice texture. I only had salted pumpkin seeds so I used Walnuts or pecans on top . Delicious. Great blog! Mary
These muffins contain 173 calories each without the added pumpkin seeds and 226 calories with. Thanks so much for your comment!
These are delicious! I left off the toppings but otherwise followed the recipe exactly. Will definitely make these often this season.
So glad you liked them!
Hi there
could you please advise as to how many calories per muffin, with this recipe (pumpkin -oat-muffins)
Looking forward to baking these muffins 🙂
Thank you
Wendy
These muffins contain 173 calories each without the added pumpkin seeds and 226 calories with. I hope you enjoy them!
I added coconut and butterscotch chips. Yummy!
Great idea! Yum!
Hi
Can you give the metric equivalent for the recipe so that it’s eaiser to measure in terms of grams and milliliter ?
Is your 1 cup = 250 ml ?
Thanks for your question. Because most of my readers are American, I don’t always give the metric equivalent but I am updating my recipes with this information as I am able. But to your question, 1 cup liquid is 250ml but dry ingredients and ingredients like butter vary (1 cup flour is 120 grams and 1 cup butter is 225 grams for example). It’s best to check online or google it, just to be sure. Hope that helps!
I made some substitutions and they turned out amazing! They are moist and the *perfect* amount of sweetness 🙂 Thank you so much for the recipe!
Substitutions:
– whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour
– coconut oil instead of vegetable oil
– maple syrup instead of brown sugar
– pumpkin pie spice (about 3.5 tsp) instead of separate spices
– also added some walnuts on top
So glad you enjoyed them!! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!!😊
How much sugar, carbs and cholesterol are in these muffins? I’d like to make these for my family. My husband is diabetic so we have to watch the sugar and carbs.
The nutrition information should be found in the recipe card above 🙂
Excellent recipe. Moist and flavorful.
So glad you liked it!!
These muffins are really good, moist and full of spicy flavor, yummy! The only change I made was to use whole wheat flour and they turned out great! I will certainly make this again. One of my family members is diabetic, so do you know if I could use Splenda instead of the brown sugar? Thank you so much for sharing your recipes!
I don’t bake with Splenda, so I can’t comment, however most sugar substitutes that are made to behave like granulated sugar should work.
Great muffin recipe. I used homemade applesauce and leftover oatmeal and doubled the recipe and it turned out great! Looking forward to trying out more recipes!
Thanks so much for letting us know! Glad you liked them!!
These are great! Perfect as is – not too sweet and almost buttery (and there’s no butter!)
Made them with little one home sick to sneak some vitamin C in!!
So glad you liked them!!
What size can of pumpkin?Will 796ml do a double batch?And I am diabetic and splenda brown sugar blend and
it works fine
Yes! 🙂
Excellent muffin!! Added chopped dried cranberries! Topped with the pumpkin seeds! Made eleven slightly larger gorgeous muffins. Baked couple extra minutes!
That addition sounds delicious!🙂
Wondering if these freeze well to eat at a later date?
Yes, you can freeze them, but make sure they’re well packed in foil and in a freezer bag or container. You can store them in the freezer for up to 3 months. Happy baking!☺️
Love this recipe – the spice mixture was perfect and I was able to skinny them down by substituting more applesauce for the vegetable oil!
I’m so happy you enjoyed it! Thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback!
Absolutely delicious, and so easy! I love how moist they are. I made them gluten free with King Arthur’s gf flour, just substituting the flour 1:1, and they were perfect. Will definitely be making these again 🙂
I’m so happy you enjoyed them! Thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback, and thanks for letting us know about the gluten free substitution.
These turned out great, not too sweet and perfect size for small kids. Next time will try adding cranberries or raisins as someone suggested in the comments.
I’m so happy you enjoyed them! Thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback!
Would it be possible to sub maple syrup for the brown sugar? If so, how would you adapt?
Unfortunately that substitution would not work in this recipe.
Not sure what happened here, but these turned out very dense and sort of rubbery. Too bad. Flavour was ok. I did not overmix or forget any ingredients.
Dense and rubbery muffins are caused by over-mixing and/or not getting your muffins in the oven fast enough. Please check out the video to see if the consistency of your batter is similar to ours and make sure you get your muffins in the oven as fast as possible after mixing the wet and dry ingredients. Hope this helps ☺️