Vegan Blueberry Muffin Recipe

I LOVE to bake - it's my favourite form of procrastination and I turn to it every time I'm feeling super stressed out. Usually my bakes are calorific chocolate-dense pieces of gooeyness, but this time I decided to give something new a go. This was met with horror from my boyfriend - 'oh Steph are you making one of your weird-ass recipes again, can't you just make cookies?!'. My answer of course was a firm no and I'm so glad. In the end even he loved them, and the whole household ended up snaffling them up within a day or two. I've really enjoyed sharing some vegan recipes with you recently, and you all seemed to love my tomato and basil risotto as well as my pear and raspberry oatmeal so here we are!
These were so moist and tasty that I couldn't not share them with you. Just a top tip: make sure you have muffin cases BEFORE you start making the mix. Mine was already made before I realised I didn't even have proper cake cases, let alone muffin cases, so I ended up with these tiny paper ones which made muffin eating much more tricky than it should be!
Blueberries are currently my favourite fruit. If you follow my Instagram, you'll probably already know this as they feature in so many of my recipes and fruity pictures. I only discovered blueberry muffins a couple of years ago and ever since then I've absolutely loved them. I would even say they're tastier than chocolate ones (say whaaat?!), because I just love coming across the little pockets of moisture and sweetness that the whole blueberries in them bring. 
Ingredients:
For the topping:
Grated zest of 1/2 lemon 3 tablespoons caster sugar
For the muffins:
225g frozen blueberries 75g fresh blueberries 170g caster sugar 375g plain flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 flax eggs 40g melted coconut oil 4 tablespoons grapeseed oil 235ml milk alternative (I used rice milk) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
Method
1.) Mix sugar and lemon zest in a small bowl for the topping and set to one side. 2.) Create the flax eggs. Mix 2 tablespoons flax seeds with 6 tablespoons water and leave to set.  3.) Preheat oven to 200 degrees (celsius) or 180 for a fan oven. 4.) Heat 150g of the frozen blueberries and a tablespoon of sugar (you can swap to agave nectar if you prefer here) in a saucepan for around ten minutes. Once cooked, strain through a sieve, ensuring you mash the berries as you go for maximum flavour. You can choose to add the 'bits' here if you want or leave them out. Leave to cool for 10 minutes. 5.) Mix the flour, salt and baking powder together in a large mixing bowl.  6.) Melt the coconut oil. 7.) Add the sugar, flax eggs, coconut oil and vegetable oil. Mix until everything is combined.  8.) Add the rice milk (or other milk alternative) and vanilla extract. Give a quick stir.  9.) Gently fold in the rest of the frozen blueberries as well as the fresh ones.  10.) Place mixture in muffin cases in a muffin tin. 11.) Place a teaspoon of the blueberry jam mixture you made earlier on the centre of the top of each muffin and swirl around. I used a wooden skewer for this, but a cocktail stick or knife tip works equally well. 12.) Sprinkle the lemon sugar mixture over the top and place in the oven for around 18 minutes.
I really hope you enjoyed this recipe, I've been loving sharing more of my creations with you recently! If you give this a whirl tag me in your pictures so I can have a peek!
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