These vegan blueberry almond muffins are my new go-to recipe, with almond flour for richness, lots of in-season blueberries, and naturally sweetened with maple syrup.
Just over two years in to this blog, I feel much more confident about developing recipes and having them work out. I thought of myself as an excellent cook before I started (I wasn't, and I'm still not), but many of my early trials were inedible because of a lack of understanding about how to substitute plant based ingredients for the things I had used growing up. I started baking at eight or nine, and cooking shortly after - but exchanging those years of knowledge for a different style of cooking didn't always translate. Whole grain flours, healthy fats, unrefined sugars, and so on, behave differently than the refined foods so many of us were or are used to. You become accustomed to healthier options once you've been eating them for a while, and I've eventually come to prefer things like whole grain noodles over white or lower sugar cookies over the tooth-achingly sweet ones I used to make.
Just over two years in to this blog, I feel much more confident about developing recipes and having them work out. I thought of myself as an excellent cook before I started (I wasn't, and I'm still not), but many of my early trials were inedible because of a lack of understanding about how to substitute plant based ingredients for the things I had used growing up. I started baking at eight or nine, and cooking shortly after - but exchanging those years of knowledge for a different style of cooking didn't always translate. Whole grain flours, healthy fats, unrefined sugars, and so on, behave differently than the refined foods so many of us were or are used to. You become accustomed to healthier options once you've been eating them for a while, and I've eventually come to prefer things like whole grain noodles over white or lower sugar cookies over the tooth-achingly sweet ones I used to make.
So these days, with a couple of years of experience with this type of cooking, I can write down a recipe and it usually works out. Maybe with a couple of tweaks during preparation to adapt to something I didn't predict. These muffins were one of the lucky recipes that turned out perfectly on the first try and have continued to turn out well all of the other times I've made them, even with some substitutions. I haven't shared a muffin recipe for a long time, especially considering how often I make them. The first recipe I posted on this blog was for banana blueberry muffins and although the recipe seems similar on paper, it isn't in practice. Actually, I'm not sure I want you to go back and look at that post.
