Apricot & Apple Muffins

Welcome back! For a lot of us, it’s back to school this morning and that means the usual stress of filling lunchboxes.

At Fruitful Day, we’re all about finding ways to make healthy delicious AND convenient. Besides delivering you boxes of the most delicious fresh fruit, we also share lots of healthy recipes with you crafted by our resident nutritionist, Michelle. If you haven’t heard of Michelle before, you can read more about her here.

Today’s recipe is VEGAN apricot and apple muffins. Generally, eggs are used for binding and structural support in a recipe as well as adding moisture and richness, however, there are several ways you can replace eggs to make a recipe vegan:

To replace one egg:

1. Flax – Add 1 tbsp of ground flax to 3 tbsp hot water and combine to form a gel.
2. Chia – Add 1 tbsp of ground chia to 3 tbsp hot water and combine to form a gel.
3. ¼ cup applesauce – peel, core and quarter apples. Bake them for 15 – 20 minutes at 180 degrees C or until very soft. Place in a blender while still hot and puree into applesauce.
4. ¼ cup mashed banana.

However, the replacement you choose will depend on what you’re making!

• Flax and chia are better when you need strong binding agents
• Applesauce, on the other hand, adds a lot of moisture and flavor to a recipe – perfect for something like muffins!

With that, we wish you a wonderful start to the week and happy baking!

Apricot & Apple Muffins (makes 10 – 12 muffins)

1 hour

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups of oat flour
• ¼ cup flax meal
• 2 tbsp coconut flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp clove, allspice and nutmeg
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh ginger
• 2 tbsp chopped dried apricots from the Fruitful Day Box
• ¾ cup of applesauce made with apples from the Fruitful Day Box
• ½ cup maple syrup/honey
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla powder

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius
2. In a large bowl, mix all dry ingredients; oat flour, flax meal, coconut flour, baking powder, cinnamon, spices, vanilla powder and chopped dried apricots.
3. Blend applesauce with maple syrup, apple cider vinegar and fresh ginger.
4. Fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and pour into a silicon muffin tray or into a lined muffin tray.
5. Bake for 20 – 30 minutes or until a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean.
6. Allow to cool and then serve with coconut yoghurt, cream cheese or butter.

*Note on ingredients – you don’t need to buy oat flour or flax meal. You can buy oats and flax seeds, then put them in a blender to grind into a flour consistency.