Vegan Orange Cardamom Muffins

This is what happens when I get four hours of sleep: I lurch through my work day with the aid of massive amounts of heavily sweetened coffee, and when I try to take a nap when I get home, realize I'm too caffeinated to fall asleep. So I decide to try out the muffin idea I came up with while deliriously biking home. The next thing I am aware of is cramming my mouth with scrambled eggs because I forgot to eat all day while wondering what that burning smell is coming from my food processor. I then realize I put whole cardamom pods (without de-shelling them) into the food processor, which is, apparently, not a good idea. And then the tears come.

So I put the muffin idea on hiatus until my brain synapses returned to full function. In the meantime, I bought powdered cardamom.

Needless to say, I am barely functional when I don't get enough sleep. But I come up with some fairly decent ideas when my logical abilities aren't in the best working order, like these muffins! This recipe isn't perfect yet, but I'll add some additions to what I did so you can make them better than I did.



Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsp cardamom
Zest from one orange
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup orange juice
1 tsp vanilla extract

2 carrots, shredded
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

Directions:

Something I should have done is make the carrot topping first. Put the carrots, sugar, and water in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil. Let boil until all the water has evaporated. Then set aside to let cool.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium sized bowl, sift flour, salt, baking powder, and cardamom together. I usually don't care about sifting all the dry ingredients together, but for muffins it is ESSENTIAL. It will be really important not to have ANY chunks in the dry mixture when it comes time to combine with the wet ingredients.

In a large bowl, mix sugar, oil, apple cider vinegar, zest, orange juice, and vanilla extract together until combined.

Add the dry ingredients. Mix together oh so carefully, just until the dry ingredients are wet. It's okay to have small chunks left of dry ingredients in the wet mixture. The point here is to not over-mix the muffin batter, which is why sifting the dry ingredients together makes this easier.. The key to a wonderful muffin is the texture. You want it dense, yet fluffy, with little pockets of air in it. The way to achieve this is with minimal mixing.

Once combined, pour into a greased muffin tin. When you have all the tins filled, sprinkle the candied carrots on top. Be careful not to let them drop on the muffin batter in big clumps, because then they will sink.

Bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into each muffin comes out clean. Let cool on a cooling rack.

This is my very first muffin recipe that I've made up, so if you have any tips just let me know. The texture on these came out very good, but the orange flavor was too weak in mine. I used 3/4 cup almond milk and 1/4 cup orange juice in mine though, so hopefully just using the orange juice will make their flavor pop more for you!