Vegan chocolate peanut butter muffins with a raspberry jam filling

My parents are currently visiting family in the U.K., and my sister and her boyfriend are celebrating the end of university exams (and for my sister, the end of university) with 3 weeks in Asia. Thus, my brother is house and cat sitting the family home, a set up that has perks (large house all to himself; no questions or requests regarding the cleanliness of said house; food money left so that he can afford to eat) but also some costs (two challenging cats to care for; no food shopping or cooking except what he does himself; no mother to take pity on her PhD studying son and do his laundry for him).

In such scenarios, I take great pleasure in catering. What self-respecting big sister wouldn't? These muffins were the first installment, and gave me an opportunity to indulge in peanut butter baking, which invokes horror in my nut hating husband (sigh).

One disclaimer I should get out of the way early is that the photos of these muffins are abysmal. I am terribly sorry. I made the muffins on a Sunday afternoon, and by the time they came out of the oven it was too dark for good photography. On Monday morning I left for the gym at 6am (also dark) and went straight on to work, with vague hopes of photographing them in my office during the day. Those hopes didn't come to fruition, and when I left work at 6pm it was again dark and I was left with the unavoidable prospect of taking photos on my phone in poor lighting in my parent's kitchen.

A proper food blogger would have made another batch for the express purpose of photography. I'm just issuing an apology, and an assurance that these are more attractive in reality than in these images.

I did find that these muffins were slightly dry, I suspect due to my exclusive use of cocoa powder over chocolate. I rectified this by cutting the muffins in half and spreading the centre with raspberry jam, but in future would probably use some melted chocolate as well as cocoa, and add a dollop of jam to the middle of each muffin before baking. I'm listing the recipe as I made it below with these suggested variations at the end.

Vegan chocolate peanut butter muffins with a raspberry jam filling

Makes 12 medium-large muffins

Print recipe

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1/2 cup plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3/4 cup brown sugar

Egg replacer to the equivalent of 1 egg, or 1 egg

1 1/3 cup non-dairy milk (I used sweetened almond milk)

1/2 cup cocoa powder (*see note below)

1/4 cup natural peanut butter

1/4 cup oil

2 tbsp crushed peanuts

Raspberry jam, extra, for spreading (*see note below)

Method

Preheat your oven to 180'C and line a 12-pan muffin tray with muffin liners.

In a large bowl, combine the flours, bicarbonate of soda and sugar. Add the egg replacer, milk, cocoa, peanut butter and oil. Stir thoroughly to combine.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared muffin tray and sprinkle each muffin with crushed peanuts before baking.

Bake for 18 - 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

When cool, cut each muffin in half and spread with raspberry jam before serving.

A note on variations: If I make these again, I would use 1/4 cup cocoa powder and 50g chocolate, melted, instead of 1/2 cup cocoa. I would also add a teaspoon of jam to the centre of each muffin before baking, by half filling the muffin pan with batter, adding a dollop of jam to each muffin, and then adding the rest of the batter.

Submitted, despite the photos!, to Healthy Vegan Friday #51. 

Do you bake for people when you think they need looking after?

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