Healthy Pineapple Sweet Potato Muffins

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

Abra Pappa, MS, CNS, LDN

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!

5 from 7 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 20 minutes mins

Course Baked Good

Cuisine American

Servings 12 muffins

Calories 162 kcal

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

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

For gluten-free: 

• Replace whole wheat flour 1:1 for all purpose gluten free flour

For vegan: 

• Replace eggs with flax or chia eggs (1 tbsp ground flax or chia: 3 tbsp water, per egg)

Nutrition

Serving: 1muffinCalories: 162kcalCarbohydrates: 28gProtein: 4gFat: 3gSaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 35mgSodium: 213mgPotassium: 296mgFiber: 4gSugar: 8gVitamin A: 4550IUVitamin C: 17.7mgCalcium: 49mgIron: 1.3mg

Snap a photo when you try this recipe!Tag me! @abrapappa or #abraskitchen so I can feature your photo!

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