Little Chompers – Vegan Chocolate Muffins

This time we’ve been testing out vegan chocolate muffins on the kids – will they notice a difference to their normal dairy laden treats?

We’ve used the basic chocolate cupcake recipe from The Vegan Society as our base, and come up with the following (the texture is much more muffin than cupcake)

The Recipe

250ml chocolate soya milk

1 tsp vinegar

130g plain flour

50g cocoa

7g bicarbonate of soda

5g baking powder

130g caster sugar

80ml vegetable oil

50g vegan chocolate buttons / broken up chocolate

Preheat the oven to 170 fan / 180c / gas mark 6

You will need two mixing bowls, a measuring jug plus a balloon whisk (or hand whisk). You can use either a muffin tin or standard cupcake tin with muffin cases.

In one bowl, measure out the soya milk and add the vinegar to it. Mix gently and leave for a few minutes for the milk to curdle.

In the other mixing bowl, measure out the plain flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder. You can sift the ingredients at this stage, but it is not essential (you could break up any big lumps with a fork).

Add the caster sugar and oil to the soya milk bowl and whisk until the liquid is combined and foaming. Add the dry ingredients into the liquid in two batches, and whisk until you get a smooth batter. Try to whisk out any large lumps, tiny ones are fine. The batter will be runny!

At this stage, you can add the chocolate into the batter or save it to decorate the tops after you have filled the cake cases.

Fill the muffin cases (to about 0.5cm from the top) and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. The muffins will be fairly firm to the touch.

The Verdict

Once you get used to the unconventional method, this recipe is really easy to do and great for baking with your children. The kids (and husband in particular) really loved the taste and texture, and didn’t question anything about them.

With such a focus on vegan and clean eating at the moment, it can’t be a bad thing to make small changes to our diet, and we will definitely be making these again!