The next step was to find a recipe. Talking with Lila, we decided to try to find a muffin recipe. After an unfruitful search through my cookbooks, I turned to the Internet, and found the Cherry Cream Cheese Muffin recipe on the Wilton site.
We made some adjustments to veganize the recipe, and used fresh cherries rather than frozen. The first step was to wash and pit the cherries. We cut the cherries in half, and measured them out by weight using the scale (around 120 grams = about 1 cup [conversion from the Joy of Vegan Baking cookbook, which lists not only measures, but also weight of ingredients]).
We used up the tub of Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese, made our own tofu based sour cream from a recipe found on fatfreevegan.com, and used Ener-G to replace the eggs. Overall the recipe came out okay, and I'm going to include it below, for anyone who is interested. The sour cream is not something I would use for non-baking purposes, honestly, but I think it worked well in the recipe, though we had lots of it left over.
We haven't made a lot of muffins, and the batter for this reminded me more of biscuit dough than anything. I'm not sure if this is normal, or if this was unique to this muffin recipe, but I guess we'll find out as we make more muffins. With the cherries halved, we had to make sure that each muffin got at least one cherry. If we were to make this recipe again, we would certainly chop the cherries smaller than halved. One other thing we realized is that by using fresh cherries, rather than frozen ones we may have reduced the liquid in the recipe.
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| Cups half full - the batter was doughy. |
The recipe made 12 regular sized muffins, and three larger muffins baked in stand-alone aluminum muffin cups.
The almond extract added a nice flavor, and worked well with the cherries, though there wasn't a lot of texture to the muffins, other than the cherries. More liquid (using frozen cherries) may fix this, but we also considered almond slivers as a solution. This is definitely still a work in progress, but I think we've made a great start.
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| The muffins - we may look for a way to add a bit of color. |
Vegan Cherry Cream Cheese Muffins (as we made them)
Ingredients:
¼ cup tofu sour cream
(what we used)
- 1 10.5 oz package firm tofu
- 4 tsp lemon juice
- 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp agave nectar
- ½ tsp salt
Blend all items in food processor or blender until smooth and creamy. (Makes 1 ¼ cups)
3 tsp Ener-G Egg Replace (2 eggs worth)
4 TBSP warm water
120 grams (a smidge more than 1 cup) fresh, pitted cherries
8 oz (1 package) Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese (Plain)
4 TBSP Earth Balance non-dairy butter, softened
½ Cup granulated sugar
½ tsp almond extract
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 TBSP baking powder
½ tsp salt
- Make sour cream first, set aside (the recipe makes ~ 1 ¼ cups, but you only need ¼ cup for the muffins).
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Line muffin pans with muffin pan liners, or spray with baking spray.
- In a small bowl whisk together the Ener-G Egg Replacer and water until frothy. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, blend cream cheese and butter with electric mixer until creamy. Add sugar, egg-replacer, tofu sour cream, and almond extract. Mix well.
- In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Beat flour mixture until cream cheese mixture, until just moistened.
- Stir in cherries - do not over mix.
- Fill muffin cups ½ full. Bake 18 - 22 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.
Possible changes to Recipe (untested)
Use 1 cup frozen cherries (juice squeezed out) instead of fresh cherries
OR
Cut fresh cherries into smaller pieces than halved (quartered or smaller)
Reduce almond extract to ¼ tsp, and mix in almond slivers (1/2 cup??) into batter
Top with brown sugar and butter mixture
OR
Sprinkle top with white sugar and candied almonds
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| Yum. |
New tools/ ingredients: Reynolds ® Foil Jumbo Baking Cups
Recipes used: posted above
Co-bakers: Allyson, Lila
Date: May 25, 2011
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