Blueberry muffin is a breakfast classic, an easy snack, and one of the most enjoyable ways to use frozen or fresh berries!
However, one problem that often occurs while baking these muffins is having all the berries sink to the bottom of the tin after baking, and that’s where this guide comes in for the rescue!
Today, I’ll show you how to keep blueberries from sinking in your muffins using one ultra-simple trick. Let’s jump right in!
Why Do Blueberries Sink in Muffin Batter?
You might be wondering why blueberries, out of many other fruits and additions, typically sink in muffin batter.
The answer simply comes down to the basic laws of physics, as blueberries are significantly denser and heavier than muffin batter, so with time and agitation, it’ll sink deeper into the semi-solid medium.
However, density difference alone isn’t enough to make blueberries sink that deep. In fact, the other factor that contributes equally to this problem is the low resistance of the batter, especially with the smooth surface of the berries.
How to Prevent Blueberries from Sinking in Muffins
Now that you know the reasons behind this problem, here’s what you can do to avoid this problem.

1 – Coat the Berries with Flour
When you are ready to add the blueberries to your muffins, the first thing you have to do is add a coating of flour to the blueberries.
As simple as that, you’ll find all the blueberries perfectly suspended in your batter. This tip actually works for two main reasons:
- Reducing Density: Doing this helps to take out some of the liquid in the fruit, making it lighter, and meaning that the density of the fruit won’t cause it to sink into the muffin batter as much.
- Increasing Surface Resistance: As flour absorbs moisture and becomes stickier, it’ll cling to the batter, preventing the berries from sinking deeper into the tin.
Typically, you will want to have around one tablespoon of flour at the ready to coat your blueberries with.
If the blueberries are especially large or you are adding a considerable amount of them to your dish, you may want to increase the amount of flour to two tablespoons.
From here, you will just need to make sure that the blueberries are completely coated in a fine dusting of flour, and you will be ready to stick the batter into the oven.
2 – Increase the Thickness of the Batter
If the batter for your muffins is especially thin, it is even more important that you add flour. Thankfully, the previously added flour is enough to slightly increase the consistency of the batter to the desired level.
With thicker batter, the heavy consistency of the batter helps to cradle the blueberries a little bit before they completely sink into the mix, meaning that you can sometimes get away with not adding the flour to the berries.
However, a thin batter doesn’t have this property, meaning that it is a must to add flour if you want blueberries throughout the whole muffin and not just at the bottom.
3 – Add Blueberries Near the Top of the Batter
Here’s another trick you can try if you want to make sure there are some berries at the upper layers of the muffin.
Right before you put the muffin tray into the oven, you will want to add some blueberries to the tops of all the muffins.
For thin batters, this will not work as well, but for thicker batters, you can generally assume that at least some of the blueberries will stick at the top.
Of course, you can make sure that method works even better by adding a dusting of flour to them before you do this.
The good news is that this method works for most add-ins for muffins and some other baked goods as well.
In other words, if you want to add other fruits, nuts, and even chocolate chips to your muffins, all you have to do is give them a fine coat of flour before baking.
Important Note on Changing the Recipe to Accommodate Add-Ins
When you want to add something new to your recipe, you are always going to want to accommodate it and how it changes the recipe. This applies to adding fruits and nuts of any sort to your muffins.
Since you’ll be using flour to make sure that the add-ins stay in place, you’ll want to take out a tablespoon (or two) of flour from the rest of the muffin mix so that the consistency stays the same.
Too much flour is rarely an issue, especially if it is only one tablespoon’s worth of flour. However, it’s important to keep that in mind when you are working with something as small as a muffin.
Don’t worry, the flour that coats the blueberries will still get absorbed into the mix, meaning that in a sense, you are still using the flour that is on the blueberries for the mix, just in a different way.
Final Thoughts
By making sure you add a little bit less flour to the overall mix (before you add the blueberries or other add-ins), you can be absolutely certain that you won’t have too much of an ingredient when the muffin tray goes into the oven.
Before you know it, your muffins will come out of the oven with blueberries suspended all throughout the muffin, rather than just being at the bottom!
Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.