Strawberry Goji Muffins

I'm not normally that prone to winter blues but I must admit that recently I've been feeling it a bit more.  With the race towards Christmas and all its materialistic trappings, I've been feeling far from festive and more in the mood to hide away and await the return of lighter warmer days.  

Cake helps and what better way of summoning up the summer gods than making them out of this summers stock of strawberries squirrelled away in the freezer.  With goji berries for making the cakes into a super food naughty treat and the rest of the ingredients already in the supplies cupboard, the sun suddenly seeped back into the kitchen.  

The recipe for these lovely muffins comes from Dreena Burton's Let Them Eat Vegan; a book that I had blogged about wanting a while back and shortly after bought.  It has been a delight to work my way through these recipes and this one is bound to be a regular; especially with another couple of bags of home grown strawberries in the freezer.

Strawberry Goji Muffins (by Dreena Burton) 

The following is my own shortened version of making these (so not word for word). I urge you to buy Dreena's Let Them Eat Vegan for more tasty and healthy vegan loveliness!

1 cup oat flour (I just blended up oat flakes for this)

1 cup spelt flour

1/3 cup of sugar (I used rapadura sugar)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom (or cinnamon)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 cup frozen strawberries

1/2 cup soya (or other non-dairy) milk

1/4 cup dried goji berries

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon arrowroot powder

2 tablespoons rape seed oil

Bit of rapadura sugar for the tops.

Bung all the dry ingredients (apart from the arrowroot powder and goji berries) into a large bowl and mix well.

In a food processor place all the remaining ingredients (apart from the sugar topping) and allow to sit for a few minutes for the gojis to soak and the frozen strawberries to just defrost a little.  

Whilst this is happening prepare a muffin tin.  This mixture made 10 quite large muffins.

Blend all the wet ingredients until smooth and then add all this to the dry mixture. Mix until all incorporated and then fill the muffin inserts/liners.  Sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top of each muffin before popping into a pre-heated oven at about 200 degrees C.  My muffins took about 25 minutes at this temperature but to make sure they are cooked stick the usual toothpick or knife into one and if it comes out clean, all is good.

Allow to cool then enjoy your little bit of summer!