I’m visiting my father for a few days. He loves blueberry muffins and likes to purchase gigantic ones from our local grocery store. They are made with eggs and plenty of sugar and a lot of questionable oils, so they aren’t appropriate for me. They aren’t appropriate for him or anyone else either, but that’s a subject for a whole other post!
I altered the recipe for my Cranberry-Orange Muffins to make these beauties — here’s the link should you wish to make them: https://downrightvegan.blogspot.ca/2018/02/cranberry-orange-muffins.html
These are not gigantic muffins. The prep time is ten minutes and the cooking time is approximately twenty minutes so you could have a beautiful muffin in your hand a scant thirty minutes after deciding that you wanted to make them!!!
They are nice and light and are perfect with a cup of tea or coffee.
Ingredients
- 2 Cups of All-purpose flour
- 3/4 Cup of sugar - use fair trade!
- 1.5 rounded teaspoons of baking powder
- A pinch of salt
- 1/4 cup of vegan margarine, well-chilled (I used Earth Balance)
- Zest of one or two lemons, as you prefer - choose lemons with bright, tight peels - I find they grate better
- Egg replacer to the equivalent of one egg - I used Ener-G Egg Replacer but feel free to use your favourite egg replacer
- 3/4 cup of lemonade or soy milk or almond milk
- 1 cup of whole fresh blueberries, or frozen, or if using dried just use 1/2 cup
- 1 cup of chopped walnuts - optional
Directions
First things first - for muffins, pre-heat the oven to 375 F. If you are making a loaf, pre-heat to 350 F
- Add flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and lemon zest to a large mixing bowl or to the bowl of a stand mixer, and whisk or stir until all of these ingredients are well-blended
- Using a pastry cutter or two knives, blend the vegan margarine into the flour until it is evenly distributed
- Add lemonade (or soy milk, etc) and egg replacer and stir until all of the dry ingredients are incorporated into the wet ingredients. Try to make sure there are no dry bits left at the bottom of the bowl. If necessary, you can add another tablespoon or two of lemonade (or soymilk, etc) to help you incorporate all of the dry ingredients.
- Stir in the blueberries and the walnuts.
- Prepare a muffin pan in your preferred way - I use muffin papers.
- Divide the batter evenly between the twelve muffin cups in the pan. I find that a large size cookie scoop is perfect for this purpose - it gives me uniformly-sized muffins and saves me from getting batter all over the pan.
- Put your muffins in the oven and set your timer for 17 - 22 minutes. I find that if I am using fresh blueberries, the muffins take longer to cook. I set the timer for 20 minutes and tested and I needed more time. I put them back for another three minutes and they tested as ready. Of course ovens vary. If you are making a loaf cook your loaf in a prepared pan for 60 to 75 minutes, but test first at 60 minute, and then every five minutes afterwards.
