Low-Fat Vegan Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

A couple days ago, my brother flew back after a short visit at the our parents’ house. He flew in at the craziest time – during rush hour! I was stuck in stand-still traffic for over 15 minutes because there was an accident on the highway (nothing major, just a rear-ending, but we were all reduced to one lane). Once I passed that, it was smooth sailing to the airport. Luckily I love my brother and don’t mind picking him up. Another bonus was that my brother came bearing gifts from home.

Homemade raspberry and blueberry jams! My Grandma, Aunt and Uncle both have raspberry bushes in their backyards, so it must have been a good year for them. Near where they live is also considered “wild blueberry country” (not sure if that’s official, but that’s what I call it). I have lots of memories of growing up and picking wild blueberries as a kid. You can take all your large, mostly watered down store-bought blueberries, I’ll eat these flavourful little guys thank you very much!

Besides the jam, I also got a huge (!!) container full of blueberries. You have no idea how excited I was to get these! In fact, I was so excited that I stuck them in the fridge and forgot about them for two days (sorry Mom, stuff took over my life for a moment). When I remembered them, I started thinking about what I could do with them, being a precious commodity and all.

So for the last few days, I’ve used them in smoothies, vegan pancakes, and even in a cereal bowl with some cinnamon and almond milk. Is it just me or does the container barely look used? I swear this is a never-ending supply of blueberries. I’ll probably have to freeze some for future blueberry pie or something.

So this morning, I did what anyone else does when they have tons of wild blueberries at 10am: I made blueberry muffins.

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Yield: 12 muffins

Low Fat Vegan Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp ground flax seed
• 3 tbsp water
• 1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup oatmeal
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/4 cup sunflower oil
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1/2 cup blueberries

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F.
2. In small bowl, mix ground flax seed with water and set aside to gel.
3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, oatmeal, sugar and baking powder. Add almond milk, oil and applesauce to flax seed mixture and mix well.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just mixed (over-mixing will result in tough muffins). Add blueberries to muffin mixture.
5. Spoon batter into muffin pan (or muffin cups if you are using) and bake for 10-15 minutes until the tops are brown.
6. Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes before removing the muffins to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Recipe adapted from sparkrecipes.com

These muffins are delicious, chewy and wholesome, but make sure they are completely cooled before you try to remove them from the paper muffin cups, otherwise you’ll only end up with half the muffin you made.

I paired my breakfast muffin with a green smoothie. I try to drink one of these a day and it makes me feel awesome. I add spinach and kale to mine, but if you are starting out trying green smoothies I would suggest using spinach first, as it’s more delicious than kale and grinds up smoother.

With this kind of breakfast in the morning, you’ll leave for work feeling super–mega–foxy–awesome–hot. (Hugs if you get that reference!) 🙂