The Baking Bandwagon: vegan chocolate raspberry muffins

I thought I'd hop on the baking bandwagon and show you a recipe I've been rather enjoying recently. This recipe is vegan (so eggless and dairy free) and can be adapted to be gluten free if need be - just substitute the flour for a gluten free alternative. This recipe will make 12 muffins, or 13 if you're lucky!

Ingredients:

For the muffins:
200 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt
40 g cocoa powder + 1/2 tsp for the buttercream
40 ml olive oil
110 g brown sugar
200 ml water
30 g vegan dark chocolate chunks - optional

For the buttercream:
225 g caster sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
1 tbsp dairy-free butter

Decorations:
Punnet of raspberries
Mint leaves

Method:

1) Preheat the oven to 180℃.

2) Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl. Then, add the salt and brown sugar.

3) Pour the olive oil into the bowl and gently mix all the ingredients together.

4) Slowly add the water and continue to mix until the ingredients are just combined and you have a smooth batter.

5) Divide the batter between the muffin cases until they are half full. If you like, you can press a chunk of dark chocolate into the centre of each case. Top up the case until it is 3/4 full.

6) Bake the muffins for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

7) Remove the muffin tin from the oven, and allow to cool slightly before individually placing each muffin on a cooling rack.

8) Allow to cool completely. In the meantime, prepare the buttercream. If you have egg free icing sugar already, then skip step 9.

9) Add the caster sugar and cornflour together, and mix in a blender for several minutes. If your blender isn't very powerful or you aren't sure, blend it in thirty second bursts to prevent the blender from breaking, and keep checking the consistency of the icing sugar. It should be a fine powder.

10) Make the buttercream by beating together 2 tbsp of the icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter until smooth.

11) By now, the muffins should be completely cool. Chop the raspberries in half. Decorate by fixing three raspberry halves to the muffins with buttercream. You can either add a mint leaf to the centre, dust with icing sugar or be creative and decorate how you like!

My recipe was a mash up of these two:
https://www.thepetitecook.com/vegan-chocolate-muffins/
https://www.biggerbolderbaking.com/how-to-make-powdered-sugar/

Happy baking!

- Kayley