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Thursday, 1 October 2009

Vegan MoFo Day 1: Muffins – how I love thee!


Wooooo MoFo!!

Yesterday I was baking muffins and thinking about what to make my first MoFo post about, when it hit me that the answer was staring at me crazily from the cooling rack: Muffins!

I love muffins. LOVE THEM. And anyone that reads this blog will not be surprised by that as they feature pretty regularly. It’s just that they are they are so easy to put together and there are a million and one combinations that you can dream up, with whatever is lurking your pantry.

I don’t even need to get a book out for a recipe anymore as I know the basics off by heart – I just open the cupboard, see what falls out and hits me on the head and pray it’s not dehydrated potato. Although come to think of it, maybe that would be awesome!

I’ve settled upon a basic recipe for muffins that’s a combination of a few I found, god knows where on the interwebs! It is this base that I use for all muffins now and here it is (I always use cups to bake - I didn’t include weights here because different flours and sugars vary in weight):

Dry:
2 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
Wet:
1 cup of non-dairy milk of your choice *
1 tsp apple cider or white wine vinegar (leave out if using yoghurt)
¼ cup (4 tbsp) light oil (such as rapeseed/canola or sunflower)
1 tsp good vanilla

*you may need more or less milk, depending on your flour / other additives, so star by adding about ¾ of it and add the rest if you need it. If you use gluten free flours, you’ll probably need a fair bit more liquid and you’ll need to add probably 1 tsp of xantham gum if you’re not using pre-mixed GF flour.

Method:
Couldn’t be easier. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix together the wet ingredients and pour into the dry then mix until just combined – don’t overmix. Then put into muffin cups.

This mixture will make around 12 muffins, depending on how high you fill the cups and you need to bake them at 180C/350F for around 20-30 minutes. Cooking time depends on many factors: individual ovens, additives, how high you fill the cups..... etc.So that’s the basics and it’d be a tasty muffin but a freakin boring one!! So jazz it up.....

- Experiment with spices (anywhere from ½ a tsp to 2 tsp, depending on what spices you chuck in there!)
- Throw in some nuts
- .....or dried fruits
- ..... or vegan chocolate chips
- .....or fresh chunked up fruit.....
- ..... or chopped stem ginger
- Replace your non-dairy milk of choice with fruit juice, or coconut milk or chocolate soymilk....
- Replace some of the liquid with vegan yoghurt (I love doing this – it gives the muffins a lovely texture)
- Experiment with different flours (I like to use spelt flour for most baking)
- Replace some of the sugar with maple syrup or agave or brown rice syrup...
- Add some molasses
- Add some wheat or oat bran mixed with a bit of non-dairy milk to your mixture for a healthy bran muffin
- Add a couple of mashed bananas
- Add some peanut butter
- Add some grated lemon zest, or orange, or lime....
- Replace some of the flour with cocoa powder or carob**
- Replace half the flour with cornmeal for yummy corn muffins
- If you make your own nut/soy milk, don’t bin the pulp/okara, chuck some into your muffins!
- Make savoury muffins, add some spices, herbs and nooch! Some grated courgette or carrot or some tinned/frozen sweetcorn are all awesome additions too.

And on and on and on it can go!And a tip – if you’re adding stuff like chocolate chips or fruit... etc, then toss them in with the dry stuff and mix them in well – the coating of flour will stop them sinking to the bottom of the muffin.

And just so this post isn’t pictureless – here are the muffins that inspired this post. I only made half a batch and here is the recipe – I put it on spark so that I can add it into my calorie tracker!



*I would just like to state that I’m not advocating the use of carob in any way, I have nothing but hatred for the stuff but I know some of you like it! Weirdos! ;0) Whoever said carob is the new cocoa was seriously disturbed!!

Laterz
xXx

17 comments:

  1. *hangs head in muffin shame*
    I've never made Muffins Sal - can you believe that!
    I'm just gonna have to pull my finger out and DO IT!
    Happy Mofo'ing chica.
    :)

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  2. I love the idea of a customizable basic recipe. I'll definitely be trying these!

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  3. Happy muffiny MoFo Alien! Thanks for the great base recipe!!!

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  4. this is one helluva way to kick off vegan mofo, Sal! hell yeah!

    thanks so much for sharing your muffin base with us - i know i can tweak it to be gluten-free, and i can't wait to do so. this is perfect! i'm not a carob fan either - ah ha ha! your chocolate banana muffins look gloriously good - i'm gonna have to try that combination! i too use sparkpeeps. i love it so much 'cause it helps keep me in line with my foodz 'n such.

    hooray for all the awesome that is vegan mofo!

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  5. I just made chocolate pumpkin muffins for my first mofo post. Hooray for chocolate muffins!

    (I just checked your recipe and there is peanut butter in there- I bet that is delicious!) I think I will give your muffin recipe a try- thank you for sharing it.

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  6. I love the customizable recipe! I've never really been into muffins, but I want to be. They're so easy and portable. Thanks for including the GF option :-)

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  7. Nice muffin tutorial. I really should whip them up more often.

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  8. Awesome looking muffin base...thanks for sharing!

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  9. aaah, I need to bake muffins more often again. they're such a great excuse for breakfast on workdays :) to answer the question you asked on my blog about 200 years ago... I had the interview with MackBrooks Exhibitions, and now am a permanent employee!

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  10. Ah carob - taste like licking sweet asphalt. Only a vegan could love that kind of flavour. But muffins per se well, who can argue with that? Yum-yum, I say!

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  11. Great minds think alike! I devoted my first day of MoFo to muffin baking, too. I like that you have a go-to "base" recipe for muffins. I use different recipes for different kinds of muffins,and it's a pain to keep them straight.

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  12. Excellent post! You are the muffin master! I love muffins too, they make great afternoon snacks.

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  13. I love muffins! I make them a lot, they are my favourite pre-gym fuel up and often my afternoon snack as well!

    I love the basic recipe so now I can just add whatever I feel like!

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  14. Cocoa is the new cocoa! Dehydrated potato muffins? I bet you could pull that off somehow!

    Way to kick off MoFo! You just can't beat the awesomeness of muffins!

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  15. MUFFINS!!!! *Happy Dance* LOVE muffins!!! If I got told I could only eat muffins for the rest of my life I would totally be okay with that!

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  16. those look glourious! welcome to mofo, indeed!

    what's funny is that i can never tell difference between carob and cocoa powder. i can in in the chip form, but not the powder. weird.

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speak to me, yo!