This week’s installment of MUFFIN THURSDAYS comes to you from my spare bedroom, because I actually took a vacation day today. I’m in my underwear right now. Things you didn’t need to know. Anyway, this installment is also brought to you by the number 3, the letter B, and the May 2008 issue of Vegetarian Times, where this recipe is taken directly from. Actually, it was a reader-submitted recipe, so thanks, Haley Fredrickson!

Lemonberry Muffins

You will need:
1 cup whole grain spelt flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp lemon extract (I actually added a bit more)
3/4 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the soymilk, rice syrup, oil and lemon extract.
2. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Mix well.
3. Gently fold in raspberries. Fill the cups of a 12-cup muffin tin 2/3rds full
4. Bake 20-25 minutes.

The whole point of these muffins is that they have no added sugar. Except, I found them to be slightly not-sweet-enough for me, and I don’t have that much of a sweet tooth, so I think most people would want them to be a bit sweeter. So thus, I took those no-sugar-added muffins, and topped them with sugar.

So sue me! A little sugar won’t hurt you. Unless you’re diabetic, I guess, in which case I’d say you should probably skip the dipping-in-sugar step.

And that concludes this edition of Muffin Thursdays…I’m going back to watching daytime TV. Fabulous.

So what, so it’s Friday? I was planning to post this last night, but Rob and I ended up going to a show that further reinforced how old I am getting, because all the kids were wearing t-shirts of bands I’d never even heard of. I was like, “Rob, what does To Write Love on Her Arms mean?” and he was like “DUH IT’S A BAND” and I was like, “…oh.” Then I came home and examined my arm-wobble in the mirror. Do you hear that? Arm-wobble. It’s the beginning of the end. Oh well, onto muffins!

Vegan Banana Chocolate Muffins

This is adapted from a recipe on the internet, who adapted it from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

You will need:
2 cups flour (I used whole wheat spelt flour, but you could probably use anything you wanted)
1 and 1/2 tsps baking soda
1 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup oil
4 mashed bananas: the riper, the better
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (Here’s the thing. I used to buy the grocery store brand of semi-sweet chocolate chips because they were vegan. This time, I picked up the package and checked, and they had BUTTERFAT in them. Ack! They un-veganized them! The store’s meager supply contains no other vegan chocolate chips, so lately I’ve been using this Baker’s chocolate, which is vegan, and just cutting it into chunks. Ghetto.)

Okay, so set your oven to 350 and put paper things in your muffin tin. You could grease each individual cup, but why would you do that when you can just use papers? See? Genius.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking soda.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and the oil together until evenly mixed. Add the mashed banana (I mashed mine with a potato masher but left some chunks of banana-y goodness and chocolate chips/chunks. Stir in the water and vanilla. Add the dry mixture a little at a time and stir until just mixed.

Fill your muffin cups evenly and bake for about 30 minutes. This recipe made about 15 muffins.

Muffins in the morning sun. I only wish that I was eating it with my feet up and a cup of coffee instead of on the way to the bus stop to go to work.

Unnggggh. So good. These muffins were literally gone in 15 minutes at my office. Of course, as anyone who works in an office knows, these people will eat anything!