Okara, Lemon & Blueberry Muffins

As regular visitors will know muffins are a regular feature for my weekend breakfasts. I am always looking for new muffin ideas and having recently made a decision to cut down on my consumption of animal products for environmental reasons I have been experimenting with different vegan muffins. Okara (more of below) blueberry and lemon combine to make a light zingy breakfast muffin full of fibre, protein and antioxidants.

The tricky part of vegan baking is what to use in place of an egg. Happily for making muffins I seem to just be able to use my regular muffin batter, leave the egg out and use slightly less of the dry ingredients and use soy milk in the place of milk. I use soy milk as a milk replacer, frozen and defrosted soy milk is ideal for baking (I freeze it in 1oz portions in my mini muffin tray) – it does separate but it also thickens and it makes it an excellent milk and egg mix substitute. I am completely enthralled by vegan baking and far prefer it to traditional cakes where I can now clearly taste the egg.

I also had a quantity of okara from my homemade tofu experiments to use. Okara is the ground soy bean pulp that is left over when you make your own soy milk (I partially dry it in a low oven and then freeze it). It is packed with protein and fibre and can be used in a number of ways. Here I used it in place of some of the flour in the recipe. It has a texture half way between cornmeal and desiccated coconut, and lightens the texture and colour of the finished muffins (and counts towards your daily fruit and vegetable intake). If you do not have any, just leave it out and use extra flour.

Detailed muffin instructions are here.

Okara, Lemon & Blueberry Muffins (makes 8 large muffins)

Wet ingredients
8oz soy milk (I used frozen and defrosted)
4oz sunflower oil

Dry Ingredients
8oz self raising flour
2oz semi dried oakra
2oz sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
Pinch salt
1tsp bicarb of soda

Handful of blueberries* (I used frozen)
Oats

Whisk the wet ingredients, and stir the dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredents into the dry and fold in. The batter should need no more than 15 folds and should be lumpy still, half way through folding add the blueberries.

Dollop into muffin tins and sprinkle with oats. Bake at GM5 for 20 to 25 minutes until risen and golden.

*If using frozen blueberries just add them to the batter directly from the freezer and bake for another minute or two.