Minimalist Baker Blackberry Corn Muffins

I’m so glad that Thanksgiving Break is here for us school-age kids. I always struggle with being unable to bake and blog as much as I would like to during the week, and often, especially these past few weeks, my weekends are packed. For example: last Saturday, I had a performing arts rehearsal at 9:00 AM, then driver’s ed at 10:30, and and a riding lesson (at a barn that is an hour away!) at 2:00. It was a really fun day in a lot of ways, but by the end, there was no way I was going to do any baking! But now that it’s break, I can do a bunch of recipe reviewing and cooking. And watching The Great British Baking Show because that show is awesome. I digress. Let’s talk about muffins!

The recipe I used here is for Minimalist Baker Blackberry Corn Muffins, which is vegan but not gluten free. They were really quite surprisingly good! They are crumbly but not overly delicate, sweet but not saccharine, and have the most lovely golden tops.

The recipe uses all-purpose wheat flour and cornmeal for the base, with plenty of applesauce, a conservative amount of vegan butter, and two flax eggs for moisture. They are sweetened with a bit of maple syrup and 1/2 a cup of cane sugar, so they are probably not the corn muffins you want to serve with chili. I think they work best as a snack or breakfast item.

I followed the recipe pretty true to form, except for two things:

• I used polenta (coarse cornmeal) instead of the fine cornmeal recommended by the recipe
• I used reconstituted raisins instead of blackberries inside the muffins. I also think I used less than were called for; maybe 3/4 of a cup instead of 1 full cup.

I think these substitutions still maintained the integrity of the recipe very well, so I have no qualms about the accuracy of my review. With that said though, I bet that blackberries would be even better than raisins!

This is not the most intuitive recipe I’ve ever made, but it only uses 1 bowl and no mixers, so I’m good with that. Instead of having a bowl for dry ingredients and a bowl for wet ingredients, you mix together the wet ingredients and sugar in a couple of stages, and then add the dry ingredients. Finally, you fold in the berries/raisins, and you’re ready to put them in the oven.

Here’s the interesting thing, though: the recipe tells you to combine the apple cider vinegar, the baking soda, and the almond milk very early on in the process. You add them all to a measuring cup, stir them together, and let them fizz. I was super skeptical about this; I thought that since the baking soda and ACV were already combined, there would be no leavening-ability left, and the muffins wouldn’t rise. However, I’m very pleased to say that I was completely wrong! The muffins rose perfectly – not just well, but even better than many other muffin recipes I’ve made. I thought that that was super interesting and I’ll be investigating why exactly that method worked so well! #bakingnerd

The yield is ten nice, plump muffins. They have beautiful domes and are good and hearty. I love them! 10/10 for this recipe by Minimalist Baker!

Question of the Day:

What is your favorite way to exercise? Mine is probably doing yoga, but I love to ride horses, and let me tell you – that is a workout!