Until yesterday, I had never tried vegan baking. Not intentionally, it just never really occurred to me seeing as most recipes involve milk, butter or eggs or a combination of the three.

Naturally, as a vegetarian, a lot of what I cook does happen to be vegan, just not what I bake. The only time I’ve had vegan baked goods is when I had vegan apple crumble bread at the Southbank Real Food Market last year. And man, that was delicious!

So when I was browsing for a peach muffin recipe online and came across a vegan variation, I thought, ‘why the hell not?!’ I had to buy a few of the ingredients that were new to me (hello, almond milk – nice to meet you) but had most at hand or compromised; I used plain flour instead of the spelt flour and a red palm and canola blend oil (an ethically sourced brand), rather than straight canola oil.

As baking is substantially less forgiving that cooking, I was a bit worried about how this new recipe would turn out but although they weren’t the prettiest baked goods ever, the muffins passed the housemate test with flying colours and if I do say so myself, they were pretty damn good.

My only real issue was that there was too much peach to muffin mixture and some of the pieces sunk to the bottom of the muffins, meaning they fell apart a little when taking them out of the tray. So I have halved the amount of peaches in the recipe below but use as many as you like. It’s not peach season here, so I used tinned peaches. One cup of peaches came to almost exactly one standard-size can of peaches.

Vegan Peach Muffins 

Makes 12 muffins

Recipe adapted from The Post Punk Kitchen

You Will Need

2 ½ cups plain flour
¾ cup brown sugar, plus a little extra for sprinkling
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup applesauce
1 cup almond milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped peaches (or 1 410g can of sliced peaches, chopped)

You Will Need to:

Preheat oven to 190C. Lightly grease a muffin tin.

Sift flour into large mixing bowl.

Add sugar, baking powder, salt and spices and stir gently until just combined.

Make a well in the centre and pour in applesauce, milk, vinegar, oil and vanilla. Stir gently until just combined.

Add the peaches and again, stir until just combined.

Using a smaller spoon (soup spoon works well for shape), scoop batter into muffin tins.

Sprinkle ½ – 1 teaspoon brown sugar on top of each muffin.

Bake for 28-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean and muffins spring back when lightly touched on top.

Leave to cool in tin for 5 minutes, then transfer onto cake cooler for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

The muffins were quite messy, mostly due to the excess of peaches but they were very yummy and as much as I hate to use this word… moist. The brown sugar on top caramelised slightly and gave the muffins extra texture but I didn’t think it was 100% necessary. The spices added extra flavour but complimented, rather than overpowered the other ingredients.

I am keen to try this recipe again using different tinned fruits (and not quite so much) and maybe fresh banana as I think that would taste great with the brown sugar and cinnamon.

Now, I’m pretty sure I have a some canned mangoes in my pantry. Might have to go and test those out…