150 Best Vegan Muffin Recipes Book Review

You can keep your macarons and your cake pops; I'm a muffin girl at heart. When I was living in my first real apartment (Ottawa, circa 1985), I used to beguile the evening hours stockpiling double batches. Since I didn't have a big supply of baking equipment, I was always short of bowls, and used to mix them up in my wok, in large Tupperware containers... in short, in any likely vessel.

I like my muffins simple, too. Corn, cranberry, apple and banana are my favourites to bake. In a café, I'd be partial to anything with berries, lemon or ginger. But I'm willing to expand my horizons, so I was intrigued when a review copy of Camilla V. Saulsbury's 150 Best Vegan Muffin Recipes (Robert Rose, 2012) turned up in my mailbox. Saulsbury, you may recall, is the author of Piece of Cake!, not to mention numerous other books on muffins (more than 750 recipes!), cookies, puff pastry, cakes and so on. She also has a gluten-free muffin book.

I'm not myself particularly drawn to the vegan lifestyle, except insofar as it espouses the preparation of delicious concoctions featuring beans and lentils and veggies. When a vegan friend once pointed out to me (with delight) that Oreos were perfectly vegan, the whole movement lost a little of its lustre for me. But I do see the point, and since lots of people are sensitive to dairy products, a vegan muffin book seems like a valuable addition to the vegan cooking library.

Saulsbury divides her recipes into five sections: her "Top 20" (classics like Lemon Poppyseed, Apple and Pumpkin); wholesome, fruity muffins for breakfast; sweet, spicy, nutty and chocolate-filled muffins for coffee time; savoury muffins for lunch or dinner, and "global muffins", which include muffin-shaped takes on international desserts like sachertorte, rugalach and trifle.

Many (though not all) call for dairy substitutes like soy or almond milk and margarine or vegetable oil. Saulsbury's introduction contains an informative rundown on the vegan pantry, including (new to me) a very clear explanation as to whether sugar counts as vegan or not. If someone simply wishes not to eat anything containing animal products, she says, all sugar is fine. However, animal bone derivatives are used in sugar refining, so anyone wishing to avoid all foods whose production process uses animal products will need to seek out sugar that is specifically labelled as vegan.

The list of recipes is ingenious. Whereas some are pretty straightforward interpretations of standard muffin recipes that leave out animal-based ingredients, others are a little more adventurous. Quite a few use root vegetables like potatoes or fruit like dates or bananas for some of their structure. Others use nuts, seeds and unusual grains like the Ethiopian teff flour. I imagine that Saulsbury must have spent some time wandering around looking at food and thinking "Could I make a muffin out of that?"; for example, she actually includes a tabbouleh muffin in the mix.

I've already tested one of the recipes, and I can see a few more that I'd like to add to my regular muffin repertoire. So I'm not going vegan all the way, but maybe some of my baking will be heading in that direction in the future.