Seedy Maple Breakfast Muffins

I never knew until I started this recipe that Claire has a beef with muffins. It’s become extremely clear to me that while Claire and I both love desserts, I’m the one who is legitimately addicted to sugar. Therefore, I think muffins are great! Who doesn’t want a little sugar to start their day? I was interested to see what would come of Claire’s Seedy Maple Breakfast Muffins, one of the few vegan recipes in Dessert Person, for numerous reasons.

For starters, I do not think this recipe was named correctly— “Bird Seed Muffins” would have been a more fitting title in my opinion (perhaps not as sexy, but whatevs). That’s because this recipe includes four varieties of seeds; pumpkin, sunflower, chia and poppy seeds. In the best way possible, it reminded me of those compact bird seed squares my grandma always hung up in backyard feeders.

This recipe has a LOT of ingredients for a muffin recipe, 17 to be exact. I was semi shocked when I saw everything laid out on my countertop before I started baking.

This time around, I made sure to get hulled pumpkin and sunflower seeds (you can refer to my little adventure learning about the differences with the Kabocha Turmeric Tea Cake). After I roasted the seeds, they made crinkling noises when they were cooling!

This recipe is easy to put together, but just like there are many ingredients, it also involves a lot of bowls. Maybe I was a little salty when I was making this recipe because another one I worked on the night before did not come together, but this is one area with these recipes I will likely revaluate. As much as I enjoy learning complicated desserts, there are times when things really can be a bit simpler. I was, however, interested to learn flax meal and boiled water can serve as a substitute for an egg in vegan food. I may need to research this further to see why works as a replacement.

Once this batter was in the cupcake pan, I was really impressed by the array of colors. The green pumpkin seeds compliment the blue and purple tones from the blueberries. I managed to get 13 cupcakes out of this batter; I believe ¼ cup is the right measurement for filling a cupcake tin, even if it’s a muffin. They took about 25 minutes to bake completely.

I’ll admit I was very scared to try these muffins. They were vegan (no offense vegans), and full of seeds throughout. But guess what…they’re freaking delicious! I was very surprised how much I liked them; they have the same blueberry and maple flavors a non-vegan muffin has, and I even enjoyed the crunch of the seeds! Overall, it was a little more grown-up version of a blueberry muffin, and I wasn’t mad about it. I consider that a big win for my taste palette, vegans and maybe even birds.

You can hear Claire explain why she’s not a fan of muffins, but still decided to create this delicious recipe in her YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxclTmGRETQ