These White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins pair tart, juicy raspberries with milky white chocolate – such a fabulous combination! You will love how simple the batter is – no buttermilk, no yogurt, no sour cream, no electric beater. Just hand mixed pantry staples!
White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins
You already know white chocolate and raspberries are a stellar combination, and that I wouldn’t share this recipe unless the muffins had a beautifully soft crumb, lovely vanilla-butter flavour and crispy golden tops. (Just confirming 😂).
So instead, let me tell you how much I love that the batter for these muffins is made with just ordinary milk – no buttermilk, sour cream or yogurt. This is actually quite rare, as the muffin world typically relies on one of these to make beautifully soft muffins and keep them fresh for a few days. Most of my muffin recipes use one of these. 🙂
But in today’s White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins, we have the juice from the raspberries to add moisture into the crumb, so we can get away with just using milk! It’s the same trick I use for my Apple Muffins, in fact, I adapted the batter from that recipe.
Ingredients in White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins
Here’s what you need to make these. Experienced bakers might immediately question the sight of only one egg – it’s deliberate! Read on! 🙂
1. For the muffin batter
Vinegar – A touch of acidity gives the baking soda a kick start to make the muffins rise. We need it in this muffin because we’re not using anything else acidic that you usually see in muffin recipes, like buttermilk or yogurt. Don’t worry, you can’t taste the vinegar at all!
Egg – Just one! Eggs hold the crumb together, but they also dry baked goods out as they set (which is why some recipes use yolks only). One egg gives these muffins just enough structure without sacrificing moisture, helping them stay soft for days.
Flour – Just plain flour / all-purpose flour. Self raising flour which has baking powder built in is not recommended here, these muffins require a specific quantity of baking powder and baking soda.
Baking powder and baking soda (bi-carbonate) – These are the leaveners that make the muffin rise. I’d have rather used only baking soda in these muffins as it makes the crumb a touch softer and rise that smidge more, but it makes the raspberries go grey due to a chemical reaction! So I settled on a combination of both. No grey raspberries in sight!
Unsalted butter – Melted to mix in for lovely buttery flavour. I typically use a combination of oil and butter in muffins – butter for flavour and the oil keeps the crumb fresher for longer (muffins are notorious for drying out the next day, unacceptable in my world – 3 days is the minimum shelf life). However, these muffins don’t need oil as the moisture from the raspberries keeps them from becoming stale.
Milk – Yup, just ordinary cow’s milk! As explained above, no buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream or other secret ingredient needed to keep these muffins moist. The juice from the raspberries take care of that, just like the apples do in the Apple Muffins this batter is based on.
Sugar – As a general rule, I prefer using caster sugar / superfine sugar for baking as the finer grains dissolve faster. However, regular white sugar / granulated sugar will work fine too.
Salt – Brings out the flavours in the muffin, most especially the vanilla.
2. The add-ins
No surprise ingredients here – just raspberries….and white chocolate!
Raspberries – I’ve used fresh as berries are unusually good value in Australia at the moment. Frozen rather than fresh raspberries work perfectly too which makes this ideal for year round baking.
Other berries – blackberries and mulberries can be used in this recipe, but for blueberries I recommend using my Blueberry Muffins recipe instead. See FAQ for more information as well as tips for using other chopped fruit (apples, mango, peaches, pears) and non-fruit add ins (nuts, choc chips etc).
White chocolate – Use chips for convenience, or chop up your own. Chocolate alternative – If you’d rather not use chocolate, feel free to leave it out or substitute with nuts – pistachios or almonds come to mind (toasted and roughly chopped).
How to make White Chocolate Raspberry Muffins
This is a typical muffin recipe – mix dry ingredients in one bowl, mix wet in another, then combine. Nice and simple!
Dry ingredients – Whisk the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Wet ingredients – Melt the butter in a heatproof bowl in the microwave. Then whisk the sugar in first – this brings the temperature of the hot butter down before mixing in the remaining wet ingredients (egg, milk, vanilla and vinegar).
Combine – Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, then mix with a rubber spatula just until the flour is almost mixed in but there’s still some visible. The batter will still be lumpy.
Add-ins – Add the raspberries and white chocolate then stir the minimum amount possible just to disperse them throughout the batter, to avoid mushing up the raspberries. Also, over-mixing leads to tough muffins, so mix the minimum amount possible – lumpy batter is fine!
Scoop up the batter using a cookie scoop or large dessert spoons.
Fill the holes of a standard muffin tin lined with paper muffin cases. Use all the batter! It will fill the holes to the top – if you levelled the surface, but there’s no need to do that. Just leave the batter in whatever shape it lands when you drop it in as the heat will melt the batter.
Bake for 22 minutes at 200°C/390°F (180°C fan-forced). This is a little hotter than typical for muffins. It makes them rise nicely and makes the tops nice and crunchy!
Cool the muffins for at least 30 minutes before eating. Because of the volume of juicy raspberries in them and the softness of the crumb, they are quite fragile when hot. Also, nobody wants third degree chin burns from boiling hot raspberry juice! Can you imagine trying to explain that to people? 😂
So these muffins are best consumed at room temperature or very slightly warm. For safety and practical reasons. 🙂
Have I talked up the crunchy golden lid enough?? The crispiness will surprise you. Muffins don’t usually have such a crunchy lid without the help of sugar or a streusel! It’s like a golden biscuit draped across the top of the muffin, and I have to tell you, it will be very tempting to pry them all off and run away with them, leaving the cake part for everyone else!!
Sadly though, at around the 12 hour mark they do start to soften. So make sure you enjoy as many of them as you can, freshly made!!
Hope you love them. – Nagi x
White Chocolate Raspberry Muffin FAQ
We made these with White Wings gluten free flour and they rose just like the pictures, though they didn’t go quite as golden, they were more a light golden colour. The inside was soft and fluffy, and the flavour was the same. The only thing I haven’t checked is shelf life as we only made them with gluten-free flour this afternoon. I will come back and report!
Note: Gluten-free flour blends vary a lot between brands, so I can only vouch for White Wings. However, the fact that it worked so well gives me confidence other good gluten-free flour blends should work too, though softness and rise may vary slightly.
These will stay fresh for 3 days, in the pantry in an airtight container though if it’s hot where you are, it is best to keep them in the fridge. Not suitable for freezing.
The shelf life assumes you follow the recipe as written and don’t substitute ingredients. Even small things like using only baking powder rather than a combination of both, or low fat rather than full fat milk, affects how well they hold up over time.
Other berries – These muffins are designed for raspberries, taking advantage of the juice they release as they bake. So similarly juicy berries that burst and bleed, like blackberries and mulberries, will work well too.
For blueberries, use my Blueberry Muffins recipe instead, unless you’re eating them all on the day. I tested blueberries in this batter because how amazing would milk-only blueberry muffins be?! Sadly, blueberries don’t burst as much, so the muffins are great oven-fresh, but a little stale the next day.
Other fruit – Juicy chopped fruit like peaches, mangoes, pears and apples will work here too, though I have purpose-built recipes for some: Apple Muffins (the shelf life is off the charts!), Peach Crumble Muffins and Mango Muffins.
Non-fruit add-ins – For chocolate chips, nuts and other non-juicy add-ins, use my Moist Chocolate Chip Muffin batter instead. It’s better suited to add-ins that don’t contribute moisture into the muffin crumb, it’s designed exactly for that because it uses buttermilk which makes the muffin extra soft and moist.
I’ve been fiddling with this recipe for a couple of years! Not in a focused way – just one of those things I’d have another crack at whenever raspberries were cheap.
Initially I started making them with the buttermilk batter from my Blueberry Muffins recipe. But I never published that version because, with the sheer volume of raspberries and white chocolate, one batch made 14 muffins. This annoyed me. Firstly, how many people have two muffin tins? Secondly, having two tins in the oven affected how evenly they baked.
Also, that recipe uses buttermilk. For the Blueberry Muffins, try as I might, I couldn’t get the crumb as soft as I wanted without it. And while buttermilk is readily available at most large grocery stores here in Australia, I’d still classify it as more of a baking speciality item than an everyday staple.
But I had it in my head that raspberries – which burst and release more juice than blueberries – should provide enough extra moisture that I could make beautifully soft muffins without resorting to buttermilk.
Over the months, I tried versions with sour cream and yogurt, which are more everyday ingredients, even carried at local corner stores. But both made the batter thicker, which meant the raspberries got more smashed up during mixing than I liked.
Then recently, it dawned on me to try the batter from my super-soft Apple Muffins. And what do you know – it worked! Those muffins rely on moisture released from the apple pieces to keep the crumb soft, so the batter itself is a simple one made with regular milk rather than bakers’ tricks like buttermilk, sour cream or yogurt.
I did make a few tweaks: switching the wholemeal flour for white, and reducing the sugar slightly because white chocolate brings plenty of sweetness. The Apple Muffins also use only baking soda as the leavener, which made the raspberries turn a little grey (chemical reaction!). So I reduced the baking soda and brought in some baking powder instead.
A couple more batches later, and here we are!
Watch how to make it
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White chocolate raspberry muffins
Ingredients
- 250g / 8 oz raspberries – 2 slightly heaped cups, if using frozen do not thaw (Note 1 for other add-ins)
- 1 cup (150g) white chocolate chips
Wet:
- 125g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter , cut into chunks (Note 2)
- 3/4 cup caster sugar / superfine sugar , or regular white sugar
- 2/3 cup milk at room temperature (low fat, full fat, non dairy also fine)
- 1 large egg (yes, just 1), at room temperature, ~ 50-55g/2oz in shell
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp white vinegar (or other clear vinegar) – activates baking soda, can't taste it
Dry:
- 2 cups plain flour / all-purpose flour , can use gluten-free flour – see Note 3
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda (bi carbonate soda), sifted if lumpy (Note 4)
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 220°C/425°F (200°C fan-forced) – extra heat gives the muffins a rise boost at the start, we will turn it down as soon as the muffins go in.
- Muffin tin – Line a standard 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
- Whisk dry – Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and give it a whisk to combine.
- Wet ingredients – Melt the butter in the microwave using a heatproof bowl. Whisk in sugar first. Then add the egg, milk, vanilla and vinegar and whisk until smooth.
- Combine – Pour the Wet ingredients into the Dry, and mix just 10 times or until the flour is just about mixed in Add raspberries and white chocolate. Gently fold through just to disperse – minimise stirring as raspberries crush easily (though some will, it's inevitable!). The batter will still be lumpy which is fine, if you over mix the muffins will be hard.
- Divide the mixture between the muffin tin holes, filling all the way to the top. There is no need to level the surface (it melts in oven).
- Bake – Place in the oven and immediately turn down to 200°C/390°F (180°C fan-forced). Bake 22 – 23 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
- Cool – Rest in the muffin tin for 10 minutes then transfer to a rack to cool for a further 20 minutes before enjoying! These are quite fragile when hot so they need to be cooled.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Life of Jaffle
Jaffle right now, under the table on which I am bashing away on the keyboard, cuddling a stick like it’s his most precious posession. May I point out – this dog has SO MANY TOYS!!!!!!!!
Hi Nagi
I made these this morning. They are absolutely delicious. I started making them and suddenly realised I had no muffin cases so I had read one of the comments if they could put in a tray bake. So I did and had a 30cm x 20cm tin and they came out a treat. They taste amazing.
They wont last 3 days in fridge cos too blimmin delicious!
Thanks Nagi.
Also we love seeing Jaffle on his adventures. He is a very good puppy and obviously Dozer is giving him good advice from the stars.
Happy Days
Just ate my first, delicious, soft crumb and crunchy top, just as described. Used mulberries and worked perfectly. Loved that it came together so easily, had to bake for a couple of minutes extra for my oven. Shame they’re not suitable for freezing, Guess I’ll just have to eat them quickly. Also recently made the blueberry muffin recipe, again with mulberries, another winner.
Hi Nagi – feel free not to publish the comment, it’s just a heads up that you can read the start of your phone number on Jaffle’s dog tag. Be careful, there are weirdos out there!
That is the cutest photo ❤️
Favouring a stick makes me think of how, out of all their fluffy, cosy beds, my three cats prefer these incredibly ugly cardboard packing things that came with a new microwave 🤣
He is just sooooo adorable xx
He’s also sooooo naughty!!!😂
Isn’t that how it always is? You buy a bunch of expensive dog toys and they go for the freebie stick out in the yard!! 🙂
I know!! I’ve vowed not to buy any more toys for him! (Let’s see how long that lasts)
I love the crunchy top too. What causes it to happen? I have an old recipe for beetroot muffins that also does this but like you say Nagi, it’s rare to get a crunchy top just forming naturally (or rather, like magic!)
It’s because this is made with milk rather than yogurt, buttermilk etc, with those the lid aren’t as crunchy. Also this is baked in a hotter oven than normal! – N x
Thank you so much for the reply. I always like to understand what’s going on.
Jaffle is so cute. Question though any thoughts about cooking times using a smaller muffin try of 16?
Check at 18 min! Still use the same oven temps though 🙂 – N x
I love your recipes, even if I can’t make them.
Jaffle is growing real fast. He is so beautiful. The pictures you show makes my day. Just like Dozer.
Aww thanks Joan. I’m glad you are enjoying the Jaffle updates! N x
Sadly, I have to inform you that g-f muffins (raspberry and other berries) have no shelf life at all. They simply disappear—it’s a mystery. 😉
😂😂😂😂😂
So this morning, his nibs asked if I had seen your recipe. He loves Raspberries and white chocolate, so I’ve taken the hint and I will defo be making these for him. I love to bake tray bakes (so I can divvy up in various sizes according to the audiance) so wonder if it would be possible to bake this as a tray bake?
Hi Chez! I love tray bakes like that too 🙂 I haven’t tried this as a tray bake, I am confident it will work the only question is scale 🙂
About that crunchy crust…! Would it work to only bake half the recipe at a time, and store batter in fridge for a day or two? or could the batter be frozen before thawing and baking??
Thanks, and hugs to beautiful Jaffle!
Hi Michelle! Unfortunately not, the batter should be baked straight away else it won’t rise as well. If you want them like freshly made you could always warm them up in the oven! – N x
Thank you Nagi for your lovely recipes. I have been making muffins and have had success with putting the muffin batter in the fridge over night. Apparently it’s an old bakers trick. The muffins rise so well. Have you done this ?
Hi Christine! I’ve fiddled with it in the past and agree it works well! This batter isn’t designed for that though 🙂 – N x
Anything white chocolate and raspberry is always going to be a winner for me…..running a close second anything lemon. Will make these over the weekend (there goes the diet)
Jaffles is growing up so fast….all puppies have heaps of toy because we think they need them…they have their favourites ❤️❤️
Love to know what you think if you try it! – N x
Just wanted to say he’s growing at such a rate!. Now I’ll check out the recipe…love your work Nagi
Hi Nagi & Jaffle, perfect timing with this recipe. Our mulberry tree is just beginning to ripen, have just picked enough to make these muffins. Thanks for another great recipe. Big hugs for Jaffle.
Isn’t it funny how we PLASTER a puppy with So Many Toys in the hopes that he will destroy them instead of the furniture. Three years later he’s chosen one and the rest are gathering dust somewhere! Jaffle is a beautiful golden.
Ignore my question, just missed the answer earlier in the recipe – duh!
Could you use frozen raspberries?
Just wanted say a huge thank you for the addition of gluten free testing and considerations to your recipes. Very happy coeliac here!!