Dairy Free Lemon, Blueberry and Almond Muffins

This week I turned 26 (boo), to celebrate we planned a little family tea party complete with home baked tasty treats. I wanted to bake a variety of things that would appeal to all of my family members including a showstopper birthday cake, something dairy free and home freshly baked bread. Having looked through all of my cook books I decided to make an eton mess inspired cake - the recipe for which can be found in the Meringue Girls cooked book everything sweet. I will type up my attempt at this cake including the few changes I made as soon as possible. I was also keen to try my hand at bread making. One of my birthday gifts was a bread making course so I thought I would have a go at making some baguettes to test my abilities before going on the course. I will report back in a few weeks as to how I got on.

For now though, my dairy free muffins. Both my brother and sister in law are vegan so I wanted to make something they would be able to enjoy. I found the basic recipe in a vegan baking book that I have and made a few alterations to make the recipe my own. This recipe can be used as the foundations for any dairy free muffins - just change the fillings and flavours to suit.

The verdict was that these was tasty but that the lemon taste was quite faint (but nice) so if you want a really zesty flavour you can add additional zest or even some lemon juice into the mix.

To make 12 dairy free muffins you will need:

• 500g Self raising flour
• 60g Ground almonds
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 250g Caster sugar
• 500ml Soya milk
• 320ml Rapeseed oil
• The zest of 2 lemons
• 100g Blueberries

To decorate:

• Toasted flaked almonds
• Icing Sugar
• Juice of a lemon

To make the muffins:

• Preheat your oven to 180c fan and line a 12 holed muffin tin with your chosen cases.
• Mix the flour, ground almonds, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and caster sugar together in a large mixing bowl.
• Add milk, oil and lemon zest the to dry ingredients. 
• Mix together thoroughly until there are no lumps. Unlike with traditional cake mix you don't need to fold the mixture as there isn't any 'air' to knock out. The rising will be caused by a chemical reaction between the bicarbonate of soda, baking power and the liquids. So being a little heavy handed with the mixing will not result in sunken muffins.

• Mix half of the blueberries into the mix before transferring the mix into muffin cases. 

• Scatter the remaining blueberries over the unbaked muffins.

• Bake the muffins for around 20 minutes. When baked, a skewer should come out clean.

To make the lemon icing:

• Mix icing sugar and lemon juice together until smooth and runny enough to pipe but thick enough that it isn't watery. I used approximately the juice of half a lemon at 5 tablespoons of icing sugar.

To decorate:

• When your muffins are completely cool: drizzle / pipe your lemon icing over the top of each muffin. Scatter the toasted flaked almonds over the icing. As the icing sets this will hold the flakes of almonds in place.

And that's all there is to it. This week on the Great British Bake Off the theme is 'free from' so why not give these dairy free muffins a go?
If the flavours I have picked don't take your fancy you can experiment with your own combinations.

Let me know how you get on.

Happy baking - Rach x