11 Boxed Muffin Mixes, Ranked Worst To Best

Muffins are a favorite among coffee shop patrons, children, and those who crave easy Sunday mornings in bed. The smell of baking muffins just wafting from the kitchen is enough to pull anyone out of a deep slumber. And the best part is, you don't even have to go through the arduous task of measuring and mixing up your dry ingredients, or even sourcing out a pint of high-quality berries for your recipe. You can just pick up a box of muffin mix from your grocery store and be on your way.

I've always made a homemade batch whenever the craving hit. But, I can see how the convenience factor would be enough for someone to add a box to their cart. I purchased, made, and sampled several different brands of muffin mix to see which one was the tastiest. In order to standardize this review, I selected all blueberry mixes, as many brands carry this flavor of mix in their lineups. So if one of them suits your fancy, you may be able to find other muffin flavors, like cranberry, chocolate chip, and more.

I used several factors to compare these mixes. I wanted a soft buttery crumb, a fair distribution of blueberries, and a solid golden brown color.

Sugar is a really critical ingredient in baking. Not only does it promote color on the respective baked good, but it also ensures moisture retention and prevents the gluten from getting too tight, which is especially important for a muffin mix. So, it would be interesting to see how Lakanto's sugar-free muffin mix would compare to other brands. It also has almond and oat flour, so I expected the texture would be different than the classic muffin I know and love.

I baked these muffins for about 25 minutes, which was 10 minutes longer than the recommended bake time (because they seemed undercooked with the recommended time). I noticed that when I pulled these muffins out of the pan, they were quite dense and heavy (like they were undercooked), and the top barely browned. But the wooden toothpick test told me they were, in fact, done. These muffins, as I expected, were sweet and full of blueberries, but the batter itself had the consistency of marzipan that had been left out in the rain overnight. I could feel the gritty, woody flavor of the almonds throughout.

If these muffins were slightly drier and puffier, I would have felt less caught-up on the almond overtones. There was so much nuttiness from these muffins that I couldn't taste the blueberries. Overall, the unpleasant mouthfeel and the cloying sweetness from something that was more artificial-tasting than sugar, made this a shoo-in for last place.

The Miss Jones keto and paleo blueberry muffin mix offers two different preparations. The "recommended" one calls for egg, milk, and melted butter, while the "paleo" one uses eggs, nut-based milk or water, and ghee or oil. I opted for the recommended ingredient list. Like the Lakanto muffins, these barely browned, and it may have been because they were only baked at 325 F, while all of the other muffin brands started at 375 F or 400 F. I would venture to say that these muffins could have been cooked at 375 F and been fine. I also noticed that the center of these muffins sunk within the first five minutes that they were on the cooling rack, which made for a muffin that didn't look all that appetizing.

The only saving grace that the Miss Jones muffins had over the Lakanto ones was that they weren't as dense. The mouthfeel was nowhere near as heavy, which made eating them easier. But, the flavor was far too almond-forward to have a balanced bite with the blueberries. The muffins also had the same odd, artificially sweet flavor as Lakanto. It was a neck-and-neck race for last place last place, and it was clear that these muffins had a little more lift to take them up just a hair above their competitor.

Duncan Hines, besides its Simple Mornings and Dolly Parton products, also carries a keto blueberry muffin mix made with almond flour, erythrithol, coconut flour, and other ingredients. Each serving contains 3 grams of net carbs and no added sugar. It calls for canola oil, eggs, and water.

These Ducan Hines muffins looked like if I were to take a pen and paper and try to draw what I think a muffin looks like. And I can tell you right off the bat, I'm no artist. These muffins sunk so much, that they looked like little balls of goop rather than the fluffy muffins depicted on the packaging. The flavor was slightly better than the lower-ranked Miss Jones and Lakanto muffins, but it wasn't good enough to convince me to taste more than a bite. I had a sneaking suspicion that these muffins would come out poor after I found the consistency of the batter to be, again, just like wet marzipan. The one flavor I could detect, besides the almond, was coconut. And, unfortunately, it just didn't jive with the blueberries — which I could barely taste in the first place.

I think another issue with these muffins were that they were far too sweet, thanks to the erythrithol. I almost felt that I needed to brush my teeth after eating them because they were so sugary. And, that saccharine flavor just lingered like a dark, oppressive cloud.

I had sampled Martha White's products once before in my ranking of the best store-bought cornbread mixes. And it didn't fare well. But it's a new day, and an entirely new product — so I was optimistic (past tense).

My enthusiasm seemingly went down the drain when I saw that the batter of these muffins was white — just like the color of powdered sugar. The batter was much more wet than I anticipated, so I had to add more milk to it in order to make it the proper consistency for baking.

I don't know what sorcery happened in the oven, but these little muffins came out the most evenly-cooked out of any that I made. They had a beautiful russet color, but when I broke one in half, I quickly noticed that this color transformation didn't pass through to the inside of the oven. It was white as snow, and almost a little freaky to look at.

Martha White quickly lost points due to its flavor. The inside of these muffins tasted like I had just bit into a bag of powdered sugar. The sweetness covered every tastebud I had, and it almost sent me running to the garbage can to spit it out. I like my muffins sweet, but when combined with the sweetness of the blueberries, Martha White's mix was just way too much.

I hate to say it, but adding protein to any baked good is going to change its consistency. And as someone who has grown to love Kodiak's line of mixes (including its pancakes), I can attest to the fact that its products are much denser, stodgier, and more filling than standard baking mixes. One serving of Kodiak's protein muffin mix contains 13 grams of protein, which is significantly more than other brands. It's also important to note that this Kodiak mix wasn't cheap.

It's never a good feeling when I pull a box of muffin mix out and audibly ask, "What happened to the blueberries?" I could have sworn that someone mislabeled a plain muffin mix with this one. But after a couple stirs with the mix-in ingredients, I was happy to report that there were, in fact, blueberries present. The color on these baked muffins was nice and even, but the hue was more brown than golden.

Overall, I think that if you are used to eating Kodiak's pancakes, you'd be fine with these muffins. But if you were to eat one in a bakery, you might take a couple of bites and put it back down. The consistency is definitely stodgy and hard to get through, and I honestly could only get through a single bite before I had to put this muffin down. The blueberry flavor wasn't paramount either, and it didn't have the softness I was looking for.

Jiffy is a brand that's praised for its corn muffin and biscuit mix, so I was interested to see how it would fare compared to other blueberry muffin brands. The major difference that I noticed between Jiffy and other brands is that it contains lard. Lard, the fat sourced from around the kidneys of the animal, is used in baking because it makes dough flaky and soft. Granted, I don't think that this would really matter for a muffin, so I was confused as to why the brand would use it.

I didn't expect that these muffins would spread as much as they did in the pan. I added the same amount to the tin as the rest of the muffin mixes I was making, and this one managed to ooze up from the tin. Luckily, I like muffin tops more than I like muffin bottoms.

Jiffy had two major issues going on. The first is that the muffins had an odd lemon undertone that I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't a bright, citrusy pop either, rather just a haze that lingered in the background. The second issue with the muffins was that the consistency was too fragile. I suspect that the lard is what put these muffins over the edge; they crumbled when I did so much as to touch them. It's not a bad muffin, just one I wouldn't consider eating again in the presence of other, tastier ones.

Krusteaz is a brand I associate with boxed pancake mix more than muffin mix. Its muffin mix is made with wild blueberries, rather than regular farmed ones. The difference between these two varieties is that the former tend to be much smaller and have more antioxidants than its farmed brethren.

The first thing I noticed about the Krusteaz muffins is that they didn't really brown — at all. There wasn't a lick of color on these muffins before the batter went into the oven or after they came out. The gluten-free version of the same brand, though, had a much better color with a similar consistency. Although these muffins were quite sweet, they were more dense for a blueberry muffin than I would really want. The gluten-free Krusteaz muffins, on the other hand, were light, fluffy, and perfectly cooked. Although I say it quite infrequently, this is one product where I would honestly prefer to eat the gluten-free version. But, this Krusteaz mix didn't have the same structural or flavor issues that the lower ranking brands, so it earned a respectable spot near the middle.

I had to sample a gluten-free brand of muffin mix, so I chose Krusteaz. I figured since it was already a relatively mainstream brand, just made without the gluten, that it would reflect a higher quality than a gluten-free mix that also touted other health claims, like being keto or paleo. This mix requires butter, milk, and eggs and is made with brown rice flour and starches. I noticed that the first ingredient on this list was sugar, so it would be interesting to see how this played out with the canned wild blueberry accompaniment.

I honestly didn't think these muffins were going to turn out as delicious as they did. While the color on the tops of the gluten-free muffins isn't as consistent as it could be, the structure inside of these muffins were quite light, soft, and like a proper muffin should be. If you labeled these as regular muffins, I don't think I would be able to tell that they were gluten-free. The sugar flavor was also a bit more moderate than I expected from an ingredient list that started out with sugar. After a few bites, though, I found that the sweetness lingered in the back of my throat and was a little too saccharine for my liking. But if you're a gluten-free eater looking for a baking that tastes just like the "real thing," Krusteaz is a great place to start.

I was a bit confused as to what made the Duncan Hines Simple Mornings mix different than the Dolly Parton version. It didn't require any additional butter — just water, milk, and oil — so I guess that could make things a bit easier. It also doesn't contain any high fructose corn syrup or preservatives, which may be attractive to some consumers.

Like the Dolly Parton version, this product comes with a streusel to add to the muffins before you bake them. The batter was super leavening and puffy once I mixed it up, and I could audibly hear the air bubbles rising and popping before I put it in the oven. The color on these muffins was sublime, despite how pale the raw batter was.

The streusel is ultimately the factor that cost the Simple Mornings muffins the race. The package didn't call for melted butter to be mixed with the streusel, so the topping came out quite pale and didn't really stick to the muffins. The sugar crystals were also significantly smaller, which made it seem like the topping was an afterthought rather than something that was meant to be there Although I think these muffins looked better than the Dolly Parton ones by a long shot — and also had a softer, fluffier consistency — I ultimately liked the larger crystals on the Dolly Parton product more.

Don't let me down, Dolly! That's all I could think about when I was mixing up a bowl of this muffin batter. Not only did this box come with the dry muffin mix, but it also included a streusel that needed to be mixed with melted butter so it could be added to the top of each muffin before baking. Besides the streusel, this mix already required more ingredients (melted butter, oil, milk, and eggs) than the other muffin mixes that I sampled, so that did take away some points in the ranking. But, only time would tell if the extra work put into this batch would be entirely worth it.

I was hesitant to believe that the sugary crumble on top of these muffins would actually aid this muffin in any capacity. But, after getting a bite of it in, combined with the soft, premium quality of the muffin underneath, I'll admit that I was pleasantly surprised. I found the consistency of these muffins to be, overall, quite springy and delicious, and the bit of crunchy sugar on the back of my molars just made the bite more unique than the other brands and catapulted it up in the ranking. However, the only issue I have with Duncan Hines' Dolly Parton mix is that the batter turns blue. Although it doesn't affect the consistency or taste, it makes these muffins look a little rough around the edges.

Betty Crocker, like Krusteaz, uses wild blueberries in its mix instead of the farmed ones. And like other brands, it required a simple combination of ingredients to whip up; you'll just need a bit of eggs, oil, and water. It's important to note that this mix uses canned wild blueberries, rather than dehydrated ones, in its mix. So it takes a bit more legwork to open a can and pour your desired amount of blueberries into the mix, but I supposed it also shifts the blame onto you if you don't add enough to the batter.

These Betty Crocker muffins were much lighter than the Krusteaz ones, and not nearly as sweet as the brand's gluten-free variety. I would say that this one was my favorite out of all three because it has that light, bounciness to it that the other brands, including top players like Duncan Hines, didn't have. I also liked that the blueberries had a little bit of a squish to them, and you couldn't at all tell that they came from a can. The smell of these muffins was sweet and floral and made for a tantalizing choice. These are a batch of muffins that I could confidently serve to a group of people and try to pawn them off as being homemade, which ultimately earned them the title of "top muffin."

I sourced these muffin mixes from two grocery stores to ensure that there was a wide representation of brands and products. Once I had each of the mixes, I prepared them according to the package instructions, which included added in the ingredients tailored to each recipe, like milk, melted butter, oil, eggs, and water, and cooking them based on the time and temperature listed. I checked each muffin with a toothpick before removing it form the oven to ensure it was done all the way through. I also made sure that I cooked all the batches on the same day to eliminate any issues with humidity or temperature and followed proper baking technique, which included preheating the oven before baking.

I examined each product based on a holistic criteria. The most obvious factor was taste; I wanted muffins that were balanced in terms of sweetness. I also wanted a muffin that had enough blueberries distributed throughout the crumb. Moreover, the crumb should be light and fluffy, rather than stodgy and bread-like. Lastly, I looked for a decent, golden brown color consistent across the entire muffin.