Incredibly delicious fluffy sweet potato pineapple muffins. Made without butter, oil, or refined sugar. Get ready to fall in love with your new favorite healthy muffin!
(This post was originally published in 2013, the recipe, photos, and text have been upgraded and updated!)
Are you ready to get crazy town excited about some muffins? Here's a quick rundown of what has me so dang zippy:
Why I am crazy about these pineapple sweet potato muffins
- First of all, it's a muffin and I have a deep love for muffins
- Pineapple
- Sweet Potato
- Coconut
- Turmeric and Cinnamon
- No refined sugar
- No added oils or butter
The combination of earthy sweet potato and tropical pineapple is over the top delicious, with subtle warm spice from turmeric and cinnamon. Yum!
I had never heard of a sweet potato pineapple muffin until a friend handed me her beloved family recipe and said, can you fix this?
That's me, the recipe fixer 😉
My friend absolutely loved this recipe but the original version contained two cups of sugar, white flour, and an entire stick of butter. Now, to be clear, once in a while an old school muffin (ahem, technically after the stick of butter and 2 cups of sugar they are no longer muffins and officially mini cakes) recipe is just what the doctor ordered, but isn't it awesome to upgrade a recipe to a healthier version? I think so.
How to Make a Muffin Healthier
- Reduce the sugar – this is the first and in my opinion, the most important intervention. Most traditional muffin recipes contain far too much sugar which puts them in the tiny cake category. I replace white sugar with honey, maple syrup, dates, or coconut palm sugar and reduce the quantity. This recipe went from 2 cups of sugar to 1/4 cup of maple syrup! That is a HUGE reduction. The pineapple and sweet potato are naturally sweet, which helps. You can also use real fruit like applesauce or blended pineapple (which I did in this recipe) to increase sweetness without adding more sugar.
- Switch the flour – white flour is heavily processed, and high glycemic so I do my best to not use very much of it in my kitchen. There are so many amazing whole grain and grain free flours to choose from. Almond flour and coconut flour are typically my first choice, but it is much harder to achieve that quintessential muffin texture with these flours. For this recipe, I opted for whole wheat flour because I wanted to stay as true to the original texture as possible. Whole wheat flour is one small notch above white flour on the health scale, but there are times that it is the best choice and one small notch is good enough! If you are gluten-free I would recommend switching the whole wheat flour 1:1 with an all purpose gluten free flour.
- Upgrade the fat – many muffin recipes call for canola or vegetable oil. NO! I do not use industrial plant oils (vegetable oils) in my kitchen, as they are pro-inflammatory and linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Instead, opt for natural fats like butter or coconut oil. Although this recipe called for butter originally I found that the richness of the sweet potato and the natural fats from the shredded coconut were enough. I actually preferred the recipe without any added fats. That isn't always the case but when you are looking to make a recipe a bit healthier it's always worth testing with and without to see which way you prefer.
Do you LOVE these muffin liners? Me too, I bought 200 😉 Whenever I post a muffin recipe I am asked if I made the liners, I did not they are from Amazon and are called (affiliate link) tulip parchment paper liners.
How to Make the BEST Sweet Potato Pineapple Muffins
I keep switching the name pineapple sweet potato? sweet potato pineapple? Both ingredients are equally important and thus… I can't decide who gets top billing. I digress.
The key to the deliciousness of these muffins is to blend cooked sweet potato with 1 cup of fresh pineapple, eggs, maple syrup, and vanilla until super soft and creamy. This gets stirred into the dry ingredients, add more fresh diced pineapple and shredded coconut. Bake until gorgeous golden brown on top and then as soon as you pull these beauties out of the oven brush with maple syrup.
Super simple, healthy and delicious sweet potato pineapple muffin or pineapple sweet potato muffin, I can't wait for you to try this recipe!
Sweet Potato Pineapple Muffins
Ingredients
Wet ingredients
- 1 cup sweet potato puree about 1 large sweet potato baked and mashed or organic canned puree is fine
- 2 cups diced pineapple (divided in 1 cup portions)
- 2 large eggs
- 1/4 cup maple syrup plus extra for brushing on top of muffins
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Dry Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder non-aluminum
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 cup shredded coconut unsweetened
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400° and prepare a 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners
- Place cooked sweet potato, 1 cup of diced pineapple, eggs, vanilla extract, and maple syrup in a blender. Blend until silky smooth.
- In a medium-size bowl combine whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and turmeric. Whisk to combine.
- Add wet ingredients (from blender) to dry ingredients and stir together with a wooden spoon until just combined and no lumps remain (do not over mix or the muffins will become quite gummy) add shredded coconut and remaining cup of diced pineapple and fold in to combine.
- Fill muffin tin, I like bigger puffy muffins so I fill the muffin cups all the way to the top. If you prefer a smaller muffin fill to 3/4 full.
- Bake for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Brush top of muffins with maple syrup.
- Allow to cool in tins for 7 minutes, then move muffins to a wire cooling rack and allow to cool completely before enjoying.
Notes
- Replace whole wheat flour 1:1 for all purpose gluten free flour
- Replace eggs with flax or chia eggs (1 tbsp ground flax or chia: 3 tbsp water, per egg)
Nutrition
More Healthy Muffin Recipes You Will Love
Turmeric Chai Spiced Pumpkin Muffins
Gluten Free Molasses Cranberry Muffins
Catherine says
Great recipe. I added 1tsp coconut extract. Used all purpose flour. Added 3 T of the syrup from canned sweet potatos. I’d found that tip when substituting all purpose for whole wheat. Add 1.5 T liquid per cup of flour substituted. Added 1/4 tsp ginger and 1/4 tsp currry powder.
Abra Pappa, MS, CNS, LDN says
Thanks for reporting back and sharing your subs!
Catherine Maxey says
Great recipe. 2cups diced is about a 20 ounce can. Good to not have leftovers. I will use the juice somewhere else. 1cup mashed sweet potato is about 200 grams. Easier to weigh sometimes. I did not use eggs. Used 1T mayoniaise made up the differences with 1/3 cup applesauce. Added 1T white vinegar.
Abra Pappa, MS, CNS, LDN says
Thanks for sharing your variation, so glad it went well!
Betsy says
I have made these muffins 3 times in past 3 weeks! It is a wonderful, healthy muffin and I don’t feel guilty eating it. I’ve given them away and shared with so many and all love them. Thank you for your talents and posting this great recipe.
AbraPappa says
Yay!! I’m so happy to hear that Betsy! Thank you for taking the time to stop by and comment.
Big hug!
Betsy says
Just made these and they are delicious! Have been trying to find a good sugar free muffin recipe. This is a winner!
AbraPappa says
Yay!! So glad you loved them 🙂
Kim Kremer says
This sounds delicious! I’m currently off eggs. A blood test revealed high reactivity with eggs, so I figured I’d do a 30-day elimination to see if my body can tell the difference. Once that’s over, I’ll try re-introducing them, which leads me to my question: is the vegan version just as good, or is it worth waiting until I can try reintroducing eggs into my diet? (I used chia in place of eggs for my sourdough pancakes and it worked well; it worked less-well for cornbread muffins.)
AbraPappa says
I made this recipe once without eggs but I honestly can’t remember what I thought (it was a while ago). In general, I find the flax or chia egg replacement to work super well with muffin recipes. Let me know how they turn out! and good luck with the egg elimination 🙂