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Bakery style streusel-topped Rhubarb Muffins are tender, studded with tangy rhubarb bits, and topped with a crunchy brown sugar streusel.
Rhubarb Muffins
These Bakery Style Rhubarb Streusel Muffins have a beautiful high dome covered in crisp brown sugar cinnamon streusel and are a perfect weekend treat!
Truthfully, they make a great treat any time at all, because this is a quick bread recipe that you can make in just a few minutes.
All the ingredients are simple items you probably already have in your pantry. The rhubarb is going to be your hardest-to-find ingredient.
I can usually find mine at several of the little farmstands in our area. Otherwise, a big supermarket should have it this time of year.
Muffin Making Tips
Here are a couple of muffin-making tips that will yield tall, tender rhubarb streusel muffins. (These apply to any type of muffin actually).
DO NOT over stir the batter. You are going to just barely combine the wet and dry ingredients. There should still be many streaks of flour. Over-stirring will result in tough muffins.
When you add the rubharb, it’s going to add a lot of moisture to the recipe. TRUST THE PROCESS, and again, do NOT overmix the batter. Overmixing will yield super dense, tough muffins.
Start baking the muffins at a high temperature for several minutes. This activates the baking powder and creates that nice high dome on top of the muffin. Then turn the oven down to a moderate temperature (350°F) to finish baking them.
They are great to eat warm, but most muffins are best the next day and will be moister after sitting covered for at least several hours.
Can I Freeze Rhubarb?
YES! Go ahead and freeze some while it is in season, that way you can enjoy rhubarb treats year-round.
To use frozen rhubarb in recipes, thaw the rhubarb and drain it, but do not press out the excess liquid. Bake as directed in the recipe.
Rhubarb Muffin Recipe
- Make the streusel by melting the butter and stirring in the flour, brown sugar, and salt until crumbly. Set aside.
- Preheat oven to 400°F and line a muffin tin with 12 muffin liners. Stir together the 3 tablespoons brown sugar and diced rhubarb in a small bowl, set aside. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt in a large bowl and set aside.
- Beat together the butter, sour cream, milk, eggs, and vanilla extract. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently stir together. Do not over mix, there should still be streaks of flour. Gently stir in the rhubarb.
- Divide the batter between the muffin tins, (sometimes it makes enough for 13-14 muffins) and then top with the streusel. Bake at 400°F for 5 minutes. Then, without opening the oven, turn the heat down to 350°F and bake for 12-15 more minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Be sure to check out a few more rhubarb recipes, while it’s in season! Don’t miss Old fashioned Rhubarb Pie, Rhubarb Coffee Cake, Rhubarb Bars, and Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp.
And for a couple more quick bread recipes to try, I recommend the Blueberry Lemon Bread and the Cinnamon Roll Bread.
If you love strawberries paired with your rhubarb, check out these Strawberry Rhubarb Streusel Muffins from Self Proclaimed Foodie.
And if you want to double dose on your rhubarb, why not slather on some of this strawberry rhubarb jam from Flavor the Moments.
Rhubarb Streusel Muffins
Ingredients
For the Streusel topping
- 3 tablespoons butter melted
- ¾ cup all purpose flour
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
For the Muffins
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2½ cups finely diced rhubarb approximately ¼-inch in size
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup melted butter
- 1 cup sour cream or plain Greek Yogurt
- ¼ cup milk
- 2 large eggs room temperature
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
- Make the streusel by melting the butter and stirring in the flour, brown sugar, and salt until crumbly. Set aside.
- Preheat oven to 400°F and line a muffin tin with paper muffin liners. Stir together the 3 tablespoons brown sugar and diced rhubarb in a small bowl, set aside. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt in a large bowl and set aside.
- Beat together the butter, sour cream, milk, eggs, and vanilla extract. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and gently stir together. DO NOT OVER MIX, there should still be many streaks of flour. Gently stir in the rhubarb along with any juices in the bowl.
- Divide the batter between the muffin tins, and top with the streusel. Bake at 400°F for 5 minutes. Then, without opening the oven, turn the heat down to 350°F and bake for 12-15 more minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. (Depending on the size of your muffins, you may need a longer baking time – test for doneness and adjust as needed.)
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
{originally published 5/17/18 – recipe notes and photos updated 3/24/22}
Double Crumb Rhubarb Coffee Cake
These are delicious! I used fresh diced rhubarb from my garden. I did not have enough butter since I did not account for the butter in the topping, so in the muffins I used half melted butter and half vegetable oil to get to the correct amount of fat. I think the extra juice from the rhubarb and sugar helped make the batter less thick. I did not think it was that difficult to work with and the muffins rose so nicely. I did get 18 standard sized muffins from the recipe and had extra streusel topping. I had to bake them a little longer as other have said. I did 6 – 7 minutes at 400 degrees and then a total of 22 – 23 minutes at 350 degrees. I’m glad to have found another good recipe for my rhubarb, but the recipe for rhubarb bars on this site is our favorite!
Kelly – Thank you for sharing your experiences, I am glad the muffin recipe is a good one for you. The bars are a favorite in my house as well.
Like many others, I wish I would have read the comments. The batter was more like cookie dough. I made to loaves of bread instead of muffins because it looked like it would be too hard to get the dough/batter into the muffin tins. They’re in the oven now – I hope it works!
And yes I spooned and leveled the flour.
Theresa – It is a thick batter but does spoon into the tins nicely. I hope you enjoyed it as a bread.
Not the best that I’ve ever made. Too much flour in the streusel and could use a little more cinnamon. The dough was quite dry and hard to mix. The taste and flavor was okay but, I think could have used a little more moisture. I will tweak the recipe if I make it again. Not all bad though. Still a good muffin.
Like everything else I do….I went big and doubled the recipe. I added the 21/2 cups of rhubarb plus 2 cups of chopped pineapple. So I followed this recipe except I tried to use the recipe from the strawberry/rhubarb combination. In the end…I added 1 cup of sour cream and 1 cup of buttermilk. Everything else was the same from this recipe only doubled. I thought they were very good…not overly sweet or tart. They will be good for a sweet treat. I got 40 muffins plus 3 mini loaf pans. They took almost 1/2 hour more of cooking at 350 but like to have them to give as gifts for single people. Thanks for the recipe. I liked it.
I’m so glad you like the muffins, Ann!
These are absolutely the best muffins I’ve ever had!!!
Little changes I made were…
1. I added 1Tablespoon of buttermilk powder to the dry ingredients and 1/4 cup of water to the wet ingredients. ( I was out of milk)
2. I did use frozen rhubarb that I thawed out and chopped into smaller pieces. But they were still larger than what was used in the recipe. I wanted to really taste the rhubarb.
3. When I added the brown sugar to the rhubarb I let it set for over an hour to allow juice to form. When I added the rhubarb mixture to the batter I also added the juice. Not really that much and the batter is extremely thick.
4. I filled a 1/4 measuring cup with batter and used a spoon to scoop it out into the baking cups.
5. The recipe says it makes 12 cupcakes. It made 12 reg size cupcakes and 6 large ones.
6. Cooking time was spot on. I read all the comments and no idea why some people had issues.
I would recommend this recipe 100%!!! These are so delicious!!!!
I’m thrilled that you love the muffins!
I’m making these again and of course reading the comments. I was thinking … dang I wish I’d written down how I made these!! Was so happy to find my comment with everything I did!!!
I have fresh rhubarb so I’ll let it set even longer in the brown sugar!! LOVE THIS RECIPE!! Thank you!!!
The wet to dry ratio is wrong. I ended up adding more milk to make the batter not bread dough. If I were to try again, I’d increase milk to 1/2 cup at least, may be another egg. OR decrease the flour to 2 1/4 cups. They are in the oven now, so will see.
Boy, how I wish I had read the comments before. I kept reading the ingredients to make sure it wasn’t me. Way too stiff batter. They are in the oven now. Hope we like them! Made 18. I think 2 cups flour would be better.??
I hope you enjoyed them, Suzie!
I wish I had of read the comments before starting these. The batter was literally like a dough, I had to knead in the rhubarb by hand. Hoping the rhubarb adds enough liquid while baking to turn these around. Yikes!
I added more rhubarb, based on other’s comments. The streusel topping is good, but the muffins seemed to lack much flavor. They were ok but won’t make again.
Way too dense, dry and heavy. It has way too much flour in ratio to the wet ingredients.
Hi, Andrea! Is there a chance you might have over stirred the batter? The ingredients should just barely be mixed before you start baking; otherwise, the muffins will be tough. Sorry the recipe didn’t turn out the way you’d anticipated it would; I hope you have better results next time!
Hey Mallory-I first want to say “shame on you” to the people complaining about your recipe before they even get them out of the oven!! Second I want to thank you for sharing this amazing recipe!! I have made these many times with both fresh n frozen rhubarb n they always turn out awesome, everyone that I’ve made these for have either asked for the recipe or asked me to make them for them again??♀️Yes this batter is thick & sticky but the end result is so worth it!! Also I bake these as the recipe says in regular muffin tins with regular paper muffin cups 5 min @ 400• then 15@350• perfect every time!! My only complaint is I wind up with 24 instead of 12 muffins?I wish all my complaints were like this, I guess it’s more like pleasantly surprised!! Thanks again Mallory, keep up the good work!! Brenda❤️