Summer Superhero: Muffins

4 kid-friendly muffin recipes to pack and go this summer!

In this post, I’m sharing 4 kid-friendly muffin recipes for you to add to your summer cooking lineup. You might be thinking, “Muffins… random, but okay!” and let me explain why.

Muffins are one of the easiest foods to take on-the-go. You eat them with your hands, no utensils required, there’s minimal clean-up (unless they’re dry and crumbly, and we don’t do dry, crumbly muffins in this house!), they’re filling, people of all ages can easily eat them, from babies to grandparents, and they don’t require reheating! You can make sweet muffins, savory muffins, breakfast muffins, lunch muffins, the possibilities are endless. Muffins are simple, easy and typically well-loved by everyone. They come together quickly and don’t require much effot.

Here’s why I love them for summer, especially:

Kid’s hungry after swim lessons? Muffins in the pool bag, nothing messy post-swim.

Going on a family hike? Muffins in the pack, easy to eat, no clean-up.

Headed to the beach? Quick-bite muffins that transport easily and won’t fall apart in the sand.

Road trip? Traveling by plane? Muffins.

Family vacation with all the cousins? Muffins.

Picnic in the yard? Muffins.

Hangry children in the car between activities? Muffins.

Sending the kiddos off to summer camp for the day with packed lunches? Muffins.

I think you get the idea!

I have two breakfast muffin recipes and two lunch/dinner muffin recipes I’m going to share today! All four recipes feel like fun summer bites and they’re muffins my three kids absolutely devour. I love to keep these on hand in the freezer, easy to thaw and take on-the-go without having to cook anything! In preparing freezer food for postpartum when baby 4 is born this fall, muffins are something I really try to stockpile.

Here are the muffins I’m sharing today:

• Sausage Pancake Muffins

• Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins

• Pepperoni Pizza Muffins

• Corndog Muffins

Bonus recipe: my homemade pancake mix!

All of these muffins stand on their own just fine, but some marinara or ketchup are great for dipping, if available, for the pizza and corndog muffins. Some syrup for the sausage pancake muffins is delish, too!

Kitchen Supplies and Fun Lunch Servingware

When it comes to kitchen tools for muffins, I’ve really utilized silicone muffin pans over the last year. No, the silicone ones probably aren’t the best non-toxic option (that would be aluminum, stainless steel or ceramic), but using them prevents the muffins from getting stuck and the silicone saves me a ton of cleaning time. This is just one of those things my crunchy-self has let go of!

I have a regular-sized silicone pan and a mini-muffin silicone pan. My kids especially love the mini muffins and the little size is great for our youngest (19 months). The two silicone pans I have don’t make the muffins taste like silicone, if that makes sense? Sometimes I feel like you can taste the smell of silicone after using it for baking, that probably sounds crazy, but these ones I don’t notice it in the least bit. I also like that the ones that have a metal frame, so they pan is easy to put in and out of the oven. The silicone that doesn’t have any structure is very floppy and hard to handle, especially when hot!

I also have my reliable carbon steel muffin tin, that I use often and just give a good coating of olive oil spray before baking!

I’m sorry, but I’m not willing to spend $50+ on a muffin tin, so these options above work great for me and my budget. There are other items in my kitchen I allocate more budget to (looking at you, Dutch ovens). If you’d like something nicer, Silpat is what I consider the crème de la crème of silicone, reusable baking mats and they have a regular and mini muffin pan. If you’d like something non-toxic, the heavily influencer-pushed Caraway brand has a muffin tin (although I’m not sure how much of it’s non-toxicness is marketing).

For all of these muffins, you can up the protein by mixing in some unflavored protein powder to the dry ingredients. I’m currently using Taylor Duke’s unflavored bone broth protein. This is totally optional! I recommend unflavored so as not to change the taste of the muffins, apart from the Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins, you could add vanilla or a different flavor.

I recently ordered these fun red, white and blue classic food baskets to make lunches fun this summer! I got some red gingham wax deli paper sheets to go in them too. As a SAHM with my kids at home with me, I do a lot of dishes. My treat to myself is mixing it up for lunch and doing creative disposable goods (not every day). Sorry to any environmentalists, I know that’s not helping my footprint but a mom’s gotta live a little, okay!? From fun-themed paper plates (patriotic and sunshine designs on deck for the summer, florals for spring, pumpkins for fall and Christmas everything in the winter) to the little baskets or serving everything on a wood board, it’s fun to get creative, even if it’s just for sandwiches and chips.

For any recipe that calls for eggs, I use Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer. I’ve used it as a substitute religiously for five years and have never had an issue

Okay, supplies aside, let’s dive into the recipes!

Sausage Pancake Muffins

These savory breakfast muffins are a weekly staple in our home. My kids love them, especially when they can dip them in syrup! Add some shredded cheese (optional), a side of syrup and these are like a McGriddle in muffin form. You can use any ground sausage for this, it’s one way I like to use our venison breakfast sausage.

These are also allergen-friendly! As a family with egg allergies, breakfast can be really hard and I get stumped on new ideas often. But these are egg-free, and can easily be made gluten-free by using a GF flour and dairy-free by using water for the mix over milk. An allergy-friendly breakfast always feels like a win!

You can use a boxed pancake mix of choice, or see my homemade pancake mix at the bottom of this post. It uses simple pantry ingredients, no junk or additives. I keep it stocked at all times!

Sausage Pancake Muffins
Makes 24+ mini muffins or 12 regular muffins
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 15-20 minutes

1 pound breakfast sausage of choice
1-2 cups homemade pancake mix (see recipe at the bottom)
Water or milk for pancake mix
1 cup grated or shredded cheese of choice (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease your muffin tin. I love to use a mini muffin tin for this recipe!

2. In a skillet, cook your breakfast sausage until brown and crumbled. Set aside.

3. While sausage is browning, add pancake mix to a large bowl and stir in water or milk to create your batter.

4. Add the cooked sausage to the pancake batter and stir to combine. Add cheese, if you’d like.

5. Spoon or pour the sausage pancake batter into the prepared muffin tin.

6. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes for mini muffins or 20-25 minutes for larger muffins.

7. Serve with fruit and syrup on the side for dipping!

Dairy-free: To make these dairy-free, use water or a dairy-free milk alternative. Gluten-free: To make these gluten-free, use a 1:1 gluten-free flour option.

Notes: You can freeze these after baking, just note they can be a bit messy after reheating, but the kids don’t seem to mind.

Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins

This recipe is originally from my recipe collection, A Month of Dinner, Vol. 2. I love these muffins because they’re really a blank slate to get creative with! Add in some berries, some nuts, chocolate chips, you name it. There’s plenty of protein and fiber in them from the oatmeal, they will keep you full and help stabilize that blood sugar (important for the kiddos).

These freeze beautifully!

Buttermilk Oatmeal Muffins
Makes 12 regular muffins
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes

1 cup quick-cooking oats
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Can add 1/2-1 cup of mini chocolate chips, nuts, blueberries, anything you’d like!

1. Preheat oven to 400 and grease a muffin pan or line with paper muffin cups.

2. In a medium bowl, soak the oats in buttermilk for 15 minutes.

3. After oats have soaked, stir in egg, sugar and oil to the oats and buttermilk.

4. In a small bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt then stir flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Mix everything together. Stir in any add-ins of choice, then pour evenly into the prepared muffin pan.

5. Bake muffins for 15-17 minutes until done, when a toothpick comes out clean.

   

Pepperoni Pizza Muffins

A dear friend of mine shared a cottage cheese pizza muffin her kids had been eating, and those inspired this recipe. My kids did not care for the cottage cheese (how they could even taste it, I have no idea) and didn’t like the marinara sauce in the muffins, as they felt it made the muffins soggy, so I adapted the recipe to make it our own and accommodate my children’s preferences. If we’re at home, I’ll serve them the muffins with a little marinara on the side for dipping, but if we’re out and about, they eat them as they are just fine.

Pepperoni Pizza Muffins
Makes 12 regular muffins or 24 mini muffins
Prep time: 15 minutes
Bake time: 20-25 minutes

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup chopped pepperonis
Marinara for dipping (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 375 and grease a muffin tin.

2. In a bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, Italian seasoning and salt.

3. Add in the egg, milk and shredded cheese, stir to combine. Fold in chopped pepperonis.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes, then serve hot with marinara sauce for dipping!

Corn Dog Muffins

I originally made these last summer for our Charlotte’s Web bookclub party and have come back to them a number of times since then. My kids don’t typically get to do corndogs, as the breading often has egg in it and we have egg allergies, so these are always an exciting treat for them! They’re more like cornbread with a piece of hot dog in them, but I still call them corn dog muffins and they kids jump for joy when they come out of the oven. Add a side of ketchup, or eat them as they are. For the corn dog part of this recipe, I used my “Jalapeño Cornbread Muffins” recipe from A Month of Dinner, Vol. 3 and left out the jalapeño, adding the hot dog slices.

I recommend doing the mini muffins for this one!

Corn Dog Muffins
Makes 24 mini muffins or 12 regular sized muffins
Prep time: 15 minutes
Bake time: 15 minutes

1 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt or sour cream
4 Tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
Hot dogs of choice

1. Preheat your oven to 400 and spray a muffin tin.

2. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients. Milk, yogurt, butter, honey and eggs.

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together until just combined.

5. Pour into muffin tin then add 1-inch cut piece of hot dog to each muffin. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

6. Serve hot with ketchup for dipping!

Homemade Pancake Mix

I think pancakes might be my children’s favorite food group, they are pancake-obsessed! Boxed pancake mixes from the grocery store have ingredients in it that I don’t love and most of them contain egg, which we can’t have due to food allergies in our family. I created my own very simple pancake mix that uses basic pantry ingredients and I always have some on hand for weekly pancakes. This recipe makes enough for more than one batch of pancakes.

3 cups all purpose flour
1-2 Tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl until well-combined. Store half (or more) of the mix for another time.

2. Simply add water to the mix until you have your desired thickness of pancake mix. I don’t have exact measurements here, you just eyeball it.

3. Cook pancakes on a hot, greased skillet.

Dairy-free: This recipe is dairy-free, just use a dairy-free butter or alternative to grease your griddle.
Gluten-free: Use a 1:1 gluten-free flour option.

Notes: If you’re looking to boost your kid’s protein intake, throw a scoop of protein powder into the mix.