Triple Berry Muffins are high rising muffins bursting with tart berry flavor. We use fresh or frozen berries for a deliciously convenient breakfast treat. (This latest muffin recipe is a new favorite in the test kitchen!)

you’re going to love these triple berry muffins
Ok, this one is really good, people! In fact, we made this recipe three times, and ate just about every last muffin. It’s everything you could want in a perfect muffin ~ they’re moist, soft, and cake-y, with excellent flavor. How did we do it? We’ve hit on the perfect ratio of butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour and leavening for the texture, and nailed that bright flavor thanks to a generous amount of vanilla extract, lemon zest, and of course the bright, tart berries.
did I mention they’re a breeze to make?
- Melted butter means no creaming.
- No mixer necessary, just use a good old spoon.
- You can do it in one bowl, just sift your dry ingredients right into your wet.
- Use frozen berries right from the freezer for convenience.
why I use lemon zest and juice in mixed berry muffins
You might be wondering why there is lemon juice and zest in a berry muffin recipe. I do this for two reasons:
- I use lemon zest to brighten the berry flavor. Much like vanilla, lemon can bring out flavors and make them even more vibrant. The flavor of lemons is concentrated in the peel, so grating the bright yellow zest into my batter gives these muffins a distinctive flavor.
- A bit of lemon juice adds acidity to the batter, which helps it rise. The leaveners react with the acid to form carbon dioxide, which in turn rises the muffins.
Baking with frozen berries
One of my favorite baking rituals of the year is in late winter when I use up the last of my precious frozen berries we picked the previous summer. That means sometime in February or March we bake something delicious with the random assortment that’s left in the freezer and get to enjoy that bright taste of fresh summer fruit. I used a combo of raspberries, blackberries, and black raspberries, but feel free to get creative.
- If you don’t have a stash of berries in your freezer, store-bought frozen berries will work great too.
- Use your frozen berries straight from the freezer, don’t thaw them first.
- I actually prefer to bake with frozen berries because they don’t get crushed or stain my batter when I fold them in.
- Smaller frozen berries work best for muffins: avoid whole strawberries or very large blackberries.
- Even when I’ve got fresh berries I’ll often flash freeze them before I bake with them!
top 3 tips for high rise muffins
- make sure your oven is preheated – a hot, preheated oven helps muffins rise to their full potential.
- for large high rise muffins fill your muffin cups right to the top.
- a combination of baking powder and baking soda gives these muffins their nice lift. Make sure your baking powder is fresh.
reheat those leftovers
These muffins reheat beautifully in the microwave the next day – just microwave them for about 20 seconds and they will be (almost) as good as hot out of the oven.
More great uses for your frozen (or fresh) berries!
- Raspberry Champagne Sorbet
- Blackberry Cobbler Bars
- Blueberry Lemon Breakfast Cake
- Raspberry Coffee Cake
- Strawberry Buttermilk Cake
Triple Berry Muffins
Video
Equipment
- muffin pan
- muffin liners
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cups whole milk
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- zest of 1 medium lemon
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 2 cups mixed berries (fresh or frozen), heaped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F and line a 12-cup muffin tin with muffin tin liners.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla extract, lemon zest and lemon juice.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour.
- Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix to combine, until there are no pockets of dry flour left.
- Gently fold in the berries, just until evenly distributed.
- Divide the batter between the prepared muffin cups. This recipe makes enough for 12 large muffins, so you should be able to fill your muffin cups all the way to the top.
- Bake for about 25-30 minutes, until risen and just starting to turn golden on top.
Super easy recipe. Love the lemon zest and juice added to recipe. I filled muffin cups to top for the first 12 and then had four more – total of 16 muffins. Delicious.
Simple, easy to prepare and delicious. They come together in minutes . Ready for the oven in minutes and 25 minutes later, delicious muffins.
I thought this recipe was too good to be true. But it is a keeper for sure .
The muffins are moist and packed full of berries. I used the frozen berry blend from Costco. The muffins are not too sweet . For those who needed a sweeter muffin I added a simple lemon glaze.
I had trouble with the recipe. The flavor and smell was wonderful. I didn’t notice it was for large muffins and it didn’t really bake up right when I had to put both pans in the oven. I don’t know if I can salvage them. Should I have adjusted temperature or tried to bake separately? Will the second batch work if not cooked immediately?
Not sure what went wrong Dominique but yes, you can leave muffin batter out for an hour or more and it will bake up nicely. In fact, leaving it out is a great technique for getting muffins to rise higher. When I have more than one tray of muffins I do bake them separately.
I’m in the process of baking these right now! The batter is good! I doubled the recipe for family coming soon, and I’ve already filled up two 12 count muffin tins and a 24 count mini muffin tin, and still have more batter! Can’t wait to try them. I just wanted to warn people that you might have extra batter! I even filled up the tins a lot! Thanks for the recipe!
While getting ready for a shuffle of food to defrost one of our freezers I found raspberries from our bushes and blackberries hubby had picked while on his daily walks last summer. I had lemons, butter etc. on hand and thought I’d try your recipe. I love zest and fresh lemon juice so I try any recipe that calls for them. e.g. 1 bowl lemon brownie with a light glaze. These are amazing and remind me of the “Fruit Explosion” muffins from Timmy’s. Printed and added to my Repeat-Most Used folder. Thank you.
These tasted fine but they weren’t exactly structurally sound – they rose in the oven and then fell for me after I took them out.
can you use buttermilk instead of milk?
Mixed berry muffins were berry delicious. I’m definitely going to make these again and again. I thought the frozen berry’s wouldn’t work but it does in a delicious way.
I loved the easy recipe. I’m making them on a quiet stormy day. Nice and warm treat. I topped mine with brown sugar and regular sugar mixed together and sprinkled on top before baking.
Incredible taste, incredible size, incredibly easy! My kind of recipe!
Where oh where oh WHERRRRRRE has this amazing muffin been all my life???!!!!
Followed recipe exactly as is – except I didn’t have vanilla extract so subbed the same amount of triple sec – OMG
thank you this is now my go to recipe!
I made it a second time and used sugar twin (20 packets) as my hubby has type 2 diabetes – delish!
Hi! Will definitely be trying this recipe. Thanks for posting. Can you sub almond milk and if so is it a 1:1 ratio?
yes, that will work fine.