After the success of my green Pavlova for St Chad’s day earlier this month, I risked another green bake with these matcha muffins, flavoured with hazelnut and chocolate.
Instead of regular sugar I used my sample of Tate & Lyle’s Light at Heart, a blend of sugar and stevia, which is twice as sweet as sugar. Tate & Lyle say that therefore you can use half the quantity compared to regular sugar, and therefore have half the calories. I was little dubious about this, as surely if you halve the sugar in a cake you then need to add some more flour or your solid to liquid ratio will be skewed? I can see that you will get fewer calories when adding Light at Heart to drinks or on cereal, but surely in a cake, if you take half the sugar out you need to put more of something else in, or you just end up with less cake (which is bad) with the same calories by weight? (This seems to be bourne out by Suelle in this post).
In the end I made my standard muffin recipe, halving the sugar, but replacing it with extra flour. These were a great success, just the right amount of sweetness, and the texture was spot on.
If you need to cut down on sugar, or add it to cereal or hot drinks then the light at heart seems to be a good, but expensive (at £2.49 for 450g it is about 5 times the price of regular sugar) substitution.
My muffins were flavoured with matcha, hazelnut oil and “posh” hot chocolate powder or finely grated chocolate. These were delicious with the flavours working really well together. I am especially impressed with the hazelnut oil, which gave a delicious nutty taste, I am looking forward to using it some more!
Using a mix of plain and spelt flour makes the muffins more “cakey” and short. I find that increasing the ratio of spelt anymore makes any baked goods too crumbly, although baking with eggs might help with this? If you do not have soy milk then use normal milk.
Vegan Chocolate, Hazelnut & Matcha Muffins
Ingredients
Dry ingredients
- 100 g (3.5oz) plain flour*
- 100 g (3.5oz) spelt flour*
- 30 g (1oz) sugar (I used Tate & Lyle Light at Heart*)
- 1 heaped tsp baking powder
- 1 heaped tsp matcha
- 2 tbs Liquid Chocolate - or finely grated plain chocolate.
- Pinch salt
Wet Ingredients
- 60 oz (2oz) hazelnut oil
- 180 g (3/4 cup) milk (use soy milk if vegan)
Instructions
- Whisk the oil and milk with a fork and set aside. Mix the dry ingredients.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold together (the batter should be lumpy and mixing should take no more than 15 folds).
- Dollop the mixture into your usual muffin pan, sprinkle each muffin with a some chocolate flakes.
- Bake at GM5/190C/375F for 20 – 25 mins until risen.
Charlotte @gofreecakes
These look great, Helen. I love making vegan muffins. I must try some match from Teapigs as I adore their tea bags.
Helen
Thanks Charlotte,
My muffins are nearly always vegan – or at least egg free. I think it is important that people who cannot afford free range have that choice.
Also am always running out of eggs. ;-)
Choclette
The crumb on these look lovely Helen and the flavour sounds really interesting. I wouldn’t have thought to have put hazelnut and matcha together – it’s fun experimenting with flavours. I’ve not used all spelt in vegan baking, but I’ve not really noticed a problem in “normal” baking and I’ve used spelt for years.
Helen
it worked really well, especially with the chocolate. Really looking forward to playing with the nut oils more.
I find spelt mmakes the cake really crumbly, must experiment with using it and eggs.
And Yay for matcha!
Laura@howtocookgoodfood
I am most impressed by these muffins. They sound far more interesting than you regular every day full fat variety. I must try some matcha soon and I must say the platter you borrowed is so beautiful I would be using it all the time!
Helen
Love matcha. Delicious as a drink and great in things.
The plate is now mine, and is very special and will be used frequently.
Kavey Eats
Great to read that your sub worked well as I’ve got a box of the same sugar/ stevia mix waiting to be tried.
Helen
Let me know how you get on with it Kavey. I’m donating mine now I have used it once.
bakingaddict
Such an interesting flavour combination here – I can just imagine the taste. Thanks for the tip about adding flour if reducing sugar as I usually cut back on sugar especially if baking from American recipes but never replace it with anything. Not really noticed much difference so far though.
Jana
They look delicious, thanks for sharing the recipe!