13 Grocery Store Blueberry Muffin Mixes, Ranked Worst To Best

Jenny Kellerhals Keogh/Mashed

Fresh baked blueberry muffins are some of the most irresistible things in the world, as far as I'm concerned. They're comforting with a cup of coffee for breakfast, easy to throw in your bag as an afternoon pick-me-up, or something a little sweet to show people you care about them. Blueberries might be seasonal, but blueberry muffins are a timeless year-round treat.

Luckily, you don't have to consider yourself a baker to whip up a batch for yourself at home, nor do you have to settle for one of those giant coffee shop versions that taste like they're already two days old by the time you pick it out of the pastry case. There are so many boxed blueberry muffin mixes available to suit every budget, taste, and even quantity that you might want, that it might actually be difficult to decide which one to pick up on your next trip down the baking aisle. To make the decision a little easier for you, I baked and tasted 13 grocery store blueberry muffin mixes to find the easiest, most delicious, and all-around most impressive semi-homemade blueberry muffins around. From worst to best, here's what I found.

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Protein is having a moment right now, and I can't fault anyone for trying to find a way to get more of it in their diet. So I was hopeful that Kodiak's "protein-packed" blueberry muffin mix would be a delicious way to do just that. The mix calls for the addition of milk, two eggs, and oil or butter (I used oil), and makes about 12 muffins.

Unfortunately, these muffins were difficult to eat, even fresh out of the oven. The additional fat and liquid from the mix-ins did little to boost the overall tenderness of the muffins, which came out of the oven dry and immediately unappealing. Unlike the small blueberry-studded muffin illustration on the front of the box, the actual muffins have tiny blueberry flecks sprinkled throughout the batter. They have the recognizable smell of blueberry muffins, most likely from the added "natural flavor," but there's nothing resembling the fruity burst of a blueberry in these muffins.

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Unless you're planning on popping some muffins in the freezer or serving a small crowd, you might not actually need a dozen muffins, and could just as easily get the job done with six. Luckily, several brands make smaller muffin mixes that do just that, including Martha White. And given that Martha White currently offers 14 muffin mix flavors, you'd think that this mix would be perfectly dialed-in. Sadly, it is not.

Aside from the fact that these pale and short blueberry muffins bear very little resemblance to the high-domed golden muffin pictured on the front of the bag, the Martha White blueberry muffins are just barely more palatable than the Kodiak muffins. Unless you're eating them within the hour, they're more likely to taste dry and unappealing, with the artificial blueberry bits offering little in the way of flavor to make it worth it.

A single bag of mix cost me $2.15 before tax, which is one of the lower-priced mixes on this list. It also only requires the addition of ½ cup of milk, which isn't asking very much, relative to many of the other mixes. Even still, there are better options for your next quick morning muffin.

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On the one hand, the Martha White Blueberry Cheesecake Muffin Mix faces the same inadequacies that the regular blueberry muffin mix does (dryness, artificial blueberry bits, incredibly short shelf life out of the oven). On the other hand, it's also got one thing going for it — cheesecake. And unlike the fake blueberry bits, this mix actually includes real sour cream and cream cheese in the mix. Even though the sour cream and cream cheese are added to the mix in dry form, once hydrated and baked, these muffins have an ever-so-slight sour cream tartness to them. It's a welcome upgrade to an otherwise ho-hum muffin, without doing any extra work.

Perhaps it's self-evident by the size of the muffin mix package, but nowhere on the mag does it say that this mix makes six muffins. Instead, the nutrition facts say that a serving size is ½ cup of dry mix, which makes two muffins, and there are three servings per container. Of course, that adds up to six muffins, but for anyone looking for specific directions, the packaging instructions could be more clear.

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Jiffy's Blueberry Muffin Mix is the lowest-priced mix in this tasting, costing me only $1.39 before tax, and can often be found for less in stores like Walmart. It asks for the addition of ¼ cup of milk and one egg, and makes six muffins per box. Once baked, the muffins looked nearly identical to the muffins pictured on the front of the box.

This isn't the ideal blueberry muffin, but it's a step up from the previous mixes by offering a little more volume and fluffiness (perhaps due to the addition of the egg), and a good ratio of blueberry pieces to muffin batter. With that said, those are artificial blueberry pieces, and if you don't eat the muffins soon after they come out of the oven, they'll dry out in a few hours. Unlike the corn muffin mix, which classically contains lard, Jiffy's Blueberry Muffin Mix does not.

While I didn't experiment with any of the other preparation methods, directions for turning the mix into pancakes or waffles are also listed on the side of the box. The pancake recipe calls for a little extra milk, and the waffle recipe calls for a couple extra tablespoons of oil.

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Betty Crocker offers several blueberry muffin mixes, which might leave you wondering if they are really all that different. Several are similar, but there are a few differences you should know about. The pouch version of the Betty Crocker Blueberry Muffin Mix was the easiest for me to find, and available nearly everywhere near me that sold baking mixes. The mix cost me $1.80, just a little more than the Jiffy muffin mix option, and asks for only ½ cup of water or milk to mix; I used milk.

Like the other small batch mixes before it, this mix makes six muffins, and is made with artificially flavored blueberry bits instead of dried, canned, or fresh blueberries. What sets this mix apart from the ones that came before it is the unmistakable "Betty Crocker" flavor you might recognize if you spent a substantial amount of your childhood baking and eating muffin mix blueberry muffins — a sweet and almost buttery flavor that's not so dissimilar from yellow cake mix (with a strong helping of blueberry flavor added).

The muffins bake-up looking exactly like the picture on the front of the bag, and manage to keep their tenderness for about six hours after baking. If wrapped tightly after cooling, there's a chance they could even make it 24 hours without going stale.

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A lot of my expectations were shattered while testing these baking mixes, the first of which was how good I expected the Trader Joe's Blueberry Muffin Mix would taste. Previous experience tasting grocery store banana bread mixes, including Trader Joe's, led me to believe that this would be one of the top-ranked mixes — but the results proved otherwise.

The Trader Joe's mix includes a separate package of freeze-dried blueberries, which you rehydrate in water for about 10 minutes while you prepare the rest of the batter. Additional mix-ins include three eggs, ½ cup of milk, and 10 tablespoons of melted butter. The mix itself cost $4.49, and could easily add another dollar or two depending on the price of your mix-ins. The freeze-dried blueberries are a welcome upgrade from the artificial blueberry pieces in previous muffin mixes, but they also didn't pack very much blueberry flavor either.

Even more unfortunately, the muffins came out of the oven drier and less fluffy than I would have preferred. While the blueberry muffins end up looking exactly like those pictured on the front of the box, I'd consider baking them on the lower-end of their 20 to 22 minute bake time, if not a minute or two less. They might not have the same dark golden finish, but they also might not be as dry, either.

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If you find that you want fewer than six muffins, or more than 12 blueberry muffins from your baking endeavours, Betty Crocker offers a blueberry muffin mix in its line of Batchables mixes that lets you decide how many muffins you make, not the pre-portioned packaging. Mixing instructions are given for batches of four, six, eight, and 12 muffins, although there's enough mix in the container to make at least 20. Bakers who know their way around a kitchen scale could technically even bake it one muffin at a time with 40 grams of muffin mix and 20 grams of water or milk.

You might be wondering if this is essentially the same mix as Betty Crocker's pouch of blueberry muffin mix — and after tasting both and comparing the ingredients list of the two, I think it's safe to assume it is. The Batchables version increases the amount of mix called for per serving by about 18 grams, presumably to make measuring it out easier by the cup. Since I planned to serve and eat my tiny batch of muffins straight out of the oven, ideally when they're still warm and steaming, concerns about them drying out are all but forgotten. I'd also consider tossing in the last few raspberries in the fridge, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a few chopped nuts, or adding some banana slices to the batter, since smaller batches leave room for more experimentation.

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Yet another mix that genuinely surprised me was Dolly Parton's Blueberry Muffin & Bread Mix by Duncan Hines. Dolly Parton's baking mixes are easy to spot in their pink boxes on the baking aisle, and the perfectly-styled, crumble-topped blueberry muffin pictured on the front of this boxed mix had me convinced it would be my favorite of the bunch.

Of all the muffin mixes I tested, this one took the most effort to prepare, with two eggs, ½ cup of milk, ½ cup of melted butter, and ¼ cup of oil needed for the muffin batter, and an additional tablespoon of melted butter for the separate crumble topping mix. But for all that effort, Dolly Parton's Blueberry Muffin Mix falls a little flat in the flavor department. The texture of the muffins is tender and moist and the crumble topping, while modest, is a nice touch. The blueberries are real, although they're small, dried, and provide very little blueberry flavor — which tastes like an unfortunate miss when so much effort goes into making these muffins otherwise. At $5.66 per box (before mix-ins and taxes), I hoped to be more impressed with this mix than I ultimately was.

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Betty Crocker's Wild Blueberry Muffin & Quick Bread Mix is also one of the easiest mixes to find in grocery stores everywhere, and the one I've probably reached for most often over the years. The blueberry-scented muffin mix comes with canned blueberries to add a little bit of blueberry juiciness to the muffins that is woefully lacking in many of the other mixes.

The mix calls for ⅔ cup of water, ⅓ cup of vegetable oil, and two eggs to mix the batter together after rinsing and draining the berries (a step I often ignore, but chose to follow for this test). One box costs about $5 and makes a dozen regular muffins, 48 mini muffins, or six jumbo muffins. The familiar sweet and slightly buttery flavor of the muffins is nicely accented with small moist blueberry pieces, and I'm convinced that the batter itself is also blueberry-flavored with how strong the scent of these muffins is. They don't exactly taste homemade or bakery-fresh, but they'll last for a few days in an airtight container at room temperature.

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While a few muffin mixes didn't live up to my expectations, the Krusteaz Gluten Free Wild Blueberry Muffin Mix far exceeded them. My fear with gluten free baking mixes is that they'll come out dry, have an unappealing texture that's grainy, slick, weirdly chewy, or all of the above, and generally taste like chalky paste. But the reality is that gluten free baking mixes are better than they've ever been, and like the Krusteaz version, nearly impossible to tell that they aren't made with wheat flour.

This mix also comes with canned blueberries, and calls for the addition of ¾ cup of milk, three eggs, and ½ cup of melted butter. Preparation instructions are also given if you'd like to make these muffins dairy free as well. The muffins bake in about 20 minutes, and look mostly like the picture on the front of the box, with shiny tops and juicy little pops of wild blueberries mixed in. The gluten free muffins stay tender and moist for days after baking, and would probably be fine stored in the freezer if you wanted to save part of the batch for later.

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Concord Foods' Fresh Success Blueberry Muffin Mix makes absolutely delicious muffins — maybe even the best muffins from this entire tasting. But the truth is, it shouldn't be called blueberry muffin mix, since it doesn't come with berries of any kind included with the mix. Instead, you have to provide your own blueberries, in addition to the egg, ⅔ cup of milk, and ⅓ cup of vegetable oil. Having missed that key ingredient, and forced to take a second trip to the grocery store to pick up a $4 pack of blueberries to finish the mix, I somewhat resentfully popped the 12 Fresh Success muffins in the oven to bake.

Of course, the full-sized fresh blueberries make all the difference and it's impossible to resist the pull of these muffins. The mix itself is made with straightforward ingredients, which is probably why these muffins taste about as close to homemade as you'll get from a mix. Sure, you don't have to fret over measuring out the flour, sugar, leavening and salt. But it loses points for not including berries, which practically doubles the price of the $4.53 muffin mix, along with the other required mix-ins.

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While Krusteaz makes an impressive Gluten Free Wild Blueberry Muffin Mix, it also makes a classic Wild Blueberry Muffin Mix that's even better. I'll admit that the relatively plain-looking muffins didn't seem all that impressive straight out of the oven, but I was intrigued by the still warm taste of these muffins, which aren't overly sweet, and even a touch on the salty side. Once cool, the salty flavor subsides, and the juicy wild blueberries offer a sweet pop with every bite of the buttery and tender muffin. I imagine they would have stayed fresh-tasting for many days longer if I hadn't eaten them all within 72 hours of baking them.

The Krusteaz Wild Blueberry Muffin Mix cost me $4.87, and requires ⅔ cup of water, ⅔ cup of vegetable oil, and two eggs to mix. There's also a recipe for making Wild Blueberry Scones on the back of the box, which requires several more ingredients to make, but could be worth it if you're a fan of the blueberry muffins too.

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This was the last muffin mix I baked, and one of the more difficult mixes to track down — paired with the disappointment I felt after tasting Dolly Parton's Blueberry Muffin Mix by Duncan Hines, I kept my expectations low. Perhaps too low. As if trying to prove that Duncan Hines wasn't going to go down without a fight, the Simple Mornings Blueberry Streusel Muffin Mix combines everything from the most delicious muffins that came before it, without having to buy your own blueberries separately.

The box includes canned wild blueberries, and a packet of crumble topping. Unlike Dolly's mix, you don't need any extra ingredients to mix the crumble topping, and the batter only requires two eggs, ⅔ cup of water, and ½ cup of vegetable oil. In less than 20 minutes in the oven, you've got fluffy and tender muffins, studded with juicy wild blueberries, and topped with delightfully crunchy streusel topping that doesn't lose its crispness when stored for several days. There's also a recipe for Blueberry Streusel Quick Bread and Lemon Blueberry Stresuel Quick Bread on the side of the box that I'll also be trying once I stock up on a few more boxes of this muffin mix.

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Over the course of several days, I baked 124 blueberry muffins from 13 different muffin mixes. I chose muffin mixes that were available at grocery stores nationwide, or easy to find online without an additional price markup. While the price of each mix wasn't a barrier to be included in the taste test, it was a factor after the fact when considering the overall value of each mix, along with any mix-ins required to make the muffins. Special attention was paid to the flavor, texture, tenderness, and moisture of the muffins, how bold the blueberries and blueberry flavor shined in each mix, and secondarily, how much work it took to mix and bake each batch of muffins.

As a blueberry muffin lover (I mean, aren't we all?) I came into this tasting with many ideas of which brands I thought would be the best, while tasting several others for the very first time. I confronted those expectations several times along the way, and put them aside as objectively as possible when tasting each of the blueberry muffins side-by-side with the competition.