HOW TO: BLUEBERRY LEMON COFFEECAKE
My inspiration for cooking comes from memories of watching my mother cook, surfing the web, watching cooking shows, reading cookbooks (of all kinds), and experimenting with whatever in the refrigerator and pantry. Recently, I came across a recipe for “The Best Lemon-Blueberry Muffins”. I was intrigued! I love lemon and blueberries. I had blueberries in the fridge. The original recipe called for butter, milk, and an egg. Early in my vegan journey, I would have just passed over the recipe. Now, I know that most recipes can be veganized. As my mom used to say, “recipes are guides.”
For this recipe, I needed to substitute the dairy. The butter and milk substitutions were easy. For the butter, I used my go-to Earth Balance original traditional spread. A cup of dairy butter for a cup of vegan or plant-based butter. In a future post, I will try to make homemade vegan butter. For today, I am using the Earth Balance that I have in the fridge. Milk was an easy choice too. I made oat milk two days before. You can also get oat milk from your local grocery store.
Now the eggs. For this recipe, I chose to use chickpea flour and water. To replace one egg, mix 3 tablespoons of chickpea flour with 3 tablespoons of water. When mixed with water and allowed to rest for a couple of minutes, chickpea flour acts like a binder and leavening agent just like an egg. Another great substitute is aquafaba. 3 tablespoons of aquafaba replace a whole egg, and 2 tablespoons replace an egg white.
These last couple of tweaks weren’t necessarily vegan-related tweaks – more like Mama Paige-related tweaks. Lol First, I opted for coffee cake instead of muffins. Second, I decided to add two blueberry jam ribbons using refrigerator Blueberry Jam [AP – insert link to blog] that I had made a week ago. It was a good way to use the last of the Blueberry Refrigerator Jam. Now, I present to you my – the best VEGAN Lemon-Blueberry Coffeecake.
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LET’S MAKE COFFEECAKE
Ingredients:
Coffeecake Batter
3 tbsp chickpea flour
3 tbsp water
½ c. plant-based butter
Zest of 1 lemon, reserve half of the zest for the crumble topping
1 C. sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp lemon extract
2 C. all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 C. fresh or frozen blueberries
½ c. oat milk
2 tbsp blueberry refrigerator jam
Crumble Topping
½ C. Flour
¼ C. Sugar
Remaining Lemon Zest
3 tbsp vegan Butter
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375F.
Make chickpea egg, mixing chickpea flour and water. Set aside.
Coat interior of 7”x10” baking pan with non-stick oil spray
Cream together butter, ½ of the lemon zest, and 1 cup of sugar.
Add chickpea egg mixture, vanilla extract, lemon extract to butter and sugar mixture. Mix until well blended.
Toss blueberries with ¼ cup of flour. Remove blueberries and set them aside. Then, whisk together the remaining flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add flour mixture to the batter a little at a time, alternating with the oat milk. Fold in floured blueberries.
Pour and spread batter into prepared pan.
Divide blueberry jam in half. Use one half to make a jam ribbon in the batter. Place the jam at one end of the pan. Place dinner knife into the jam, drag the knife through the jam to the other end of the pan. Repeat with the other half of the jam on the opposite side of the pan.
In a separate bowl, make the crumble topping. Mix all the crumble topping ingredients with a fork or fingers until just blended. Do not overwork the topping; it is supposed to be course. Then sprinkle crumble topping on top of the batter.
Bake for 40 minutes. Keep for about a week.