Tag Archives: moist

Vegan cornbread muffins – savoury and not too sweet

Posted in The vegan elephant by

mountain of muffins.jpg

It’s only November but we are having a bona fide wintery day – a perfect afternoon for making my version of the Thug Kitchen Apple “Baked” Beans to have with cornbread.

I found this highly rated recipe from Loving It Vegan.com and gave it just a couple tweaks to make it less sweet and faster to make (Lazy, impatient… yes, I’m that vegan).

The resulting cornbread muffins are delicious – super moist, tasty and a great texture.

Here’s the original recipe with my edits indicated as either strike throughs or italics.

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Ingredients

1 heaped cup cornmeal

1 cup + 3 Tbsp all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup (115g) vegan margarine or coconut oil. I used a mix of both.

½ cup 3 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp maple syrup

1 flax egg (that is 1 Tbsp ground flax and 3 Tbsp water stirred together until it makes a brown snot)

1 cup non-dairy milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)

1 Tbsp (15ml) apple cider vinegar

1 15oz (425g) can whole sweet corn drained and rinsed.

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Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit (200 degrees celsius).

Sift all the dry ingredients except the corn and brown sugar together in a mixing bowl. And I’m serious about the sifting part – don’t skip this step or you’ll get weird, fizzy, salty bits of baking soda and baking powder in your muffins.

Add the apple cider vinegar to the soy milk and set aside.

In a very small pot melt the vegan margarine and/or coconut oil with the brown sugar and maple syrup. Do not do this step in the microwave – it’s too easy to have a painful and messy accident with superheated fats and sugars. The stovetop method is slow and safe.

Make a well in the dry ingredients. Add the oil-sugar mixture, the flax egg and the milk and vinegar mixture. Stir to combine everything, but don’t over stir. Add the canned corn and stir to incorporate.

Grease a mini-muffin tin and add the batter – about 2 heaping tablespoons per muffin cup.

 Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Blueberry banana muffins with a surprise inside

Posted in The vegan elephant by

jammy muffin

I had some waaaaay overripe bananas to use up but was too impatient to make banana bread – that takes 45 minutes to bake in the oven. So, instead I opted to make mini muffins. These little cuties are moist and delicious and nutritious thanks to chickpea flour, bananas, blueberries and walnuts. I put a little jam centre in some of them for an extra gooey, delicious surprise. Best of all, these muffins are super easy to make. Like right now. Make them now.

 

open jammy muffin

 

Jammy!

 

Dry ingredients

2/3 cup flour (whole wheat or white)

1/3 cup chickpea flour (if you don’t have this, you can just use a full cup of flour)

½ cup cornmeal

½ tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup blueberries tossed with 1-2 tsp flour to coat them. The flour coating stops the blueberries from leaking blue in the batter.

¼ cup chopped walnuts

Wet ingredients

2 very ripe bananas mashed

¼ cup coconut oil melted

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup agave nectar

1 cup plant-based milk (I used almond milk)

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

 Optional – raspberry, cherry, strawberry or other flavour jam

 

open muffin no jam

I made some of the muffins without jam and they were still moist and delicious.

 

 Directions

Pre-heat your oven to 350F. Grease a mini-muffin tin, a regular muffin tin or a loaf pan. This recipe will make 18 mini-muffins, 6-12 regular muffins (depending on the tin size) or one loaf.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. Sift in the baking soda so you don’t have any weird crystal lumps in your final mix.

In a separate bowl, mix all your wet ingredients EXCEPT the jam, if using.

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir to incorporate everything and make a batter. You don’t need to stir a lot or vigorously – just combine everything.

If you’re going with a jam-less muffin, at this point you can simply fill your baking pan. Don’t overfill the tins since the muffins will puff up.

If you’re going to add jam, fill your muffin tins just half way full. Then add a dollop of jam – a true measured teaspoon full. Cover with batter so the jam is hidden inside.

If you are making a loaf, then fill the loaf pan with half the batter. Spoon on jam in a strip down the middle of the batter and cover with the remaining batter.

Depending on the size and shape of your pans, here are your baking times.

Mini-muffins – 25 minutes

Regular muffins – 25-30 minutes

Bread loaf – 45-50 minutes.

The muffins are done when they are golden on top and a fork or toothpick inserted in them comes out clean.

Allow the muffins to cool in their pan for 10 minutes or so and then serve them up! These beauties also freeze well and make great snacks or breakfast on the go.