Vegan Treats

After I started eating meat two and a half years ago, I felt a sense of food liberation- I could eat anything! It made me a snob and I turned my nose up at vegetarians and especially vegans. Those poor limited saps, I thought while nibbling on sausages.
The truth is there is a lot of food I choose not to eat, for health reasons as well as ethical reasons. We try to avoid meat from CAFOs (we always buy local and responsibly raised while at the market, and try to avoid meat in restaurants unless we know where it comes from). We try to buy local and organic produce. We never eat fast food, though we frequent our neighborhood taqueria. We eat very few processed foods, many of which we process ourselves... and so on.
These days I have nothing against my vegetarian and vegan brothers and sisters, in fact we try to cater to them at food events. Cooking that way is pretty easy, and (aside from loving to add butter and cheese to everything) we cook that way most of the time.

Baking is another can of worms altogether.

Homemade applesauce!

Vegan baking is so scary! No eggs? No butter? It's not natural! In fact my biggest complaint/ concern when it comes to vegan baking is the use of highly processed substitutes. I wanted to bring some muffins to my sweet vegan friend Ash, so I did some searching, I found a recipe that looked pretty good, and I adapted it to fit my needs (no way was I going to buy margarine).

As it turned out these were some of the best muffins I've ever made! So moist and delicious.

Vegan Blueberry Muffins
2 cups all purpose flour, (1 C whole wheat)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
1 cup soy buttermilk, (soy milk combined with 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar)
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups blueberries (fresh if they are in season, I used frozen not thawed)

Crumble Topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used hazel nuts)
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup melted coconut oil

Heat oven to 350.
Mix crumble topping ingredients and set aside.
Mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt) in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, mix applesauce, soy buttermilk, sugar, melted coconut oil and vanilla.
Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir until the dry ingredients are just moistened. Add the berries. Don't over mix.
Pour the batter into muffin tin, sprinkle with the crumble topping and bake for about 17-20 minutes. Let cool before serving. Yum!