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Vegan Strawberry Crumble Muffins

5 from 7 reader reviews
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 45 minutes
Servings 9
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Ingredients

TOPPING:

  • ¼ cup pecan halves, chopped
  • 2½ tablespoons coconut palm sugar
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1½ teaspoons cold vegan butter

MUFFINS:

  • ½ teaspoon apple cider vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon ground flax seed
  • ½ cup non-dairy milk
  • 1½ cups white whole wheat flour
  • ⅔ cup coconut palm sugar
  • 1½ teaspoons baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
  • ¼ cup neutral-tasting oil such as sunflower, refined coconut or avocado
  • 1½ tablespoons unsweetened apple sauce
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon orange or lemon zest, optional
  • 1½ cups chopped strawberries

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease 9 cups of a standard size muffin tin and set aside.
  • Make the topping. In a small bowl, whisk together the chopped pecans, coconut palm sugar, and cinnamon. Add the vegan butter to the bowl and mix it in with your fingers, breaking up the bits of butter and working them into the sugar and pecans. Once you have a sandy texture, set aside in the refrigerator.
  • Make the muffins. In a small bowl, combine the apple cider vinegar, ground flax seed, and non-dairy milk. Give it a quick stir and let the mixture thicken for 5 minutes or so.
  • In a large bowl, whisk together the white whole wheat flour, coconut palm sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together the non-dairy milk and flax seed mixture, oil, applesauce, vanilla, and citrus zest (if using). Once combined, add the liquid mixture to the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Add the chopped strawberries as well. Stir the batter together with rubber spatula until JUST combined. There should still be a few little dry flecks of flour in the batter. This is fine!
  • Using a ⅓ cup measure, portion the batter out into the 9 greased muffin cups. Retrieve your crumble topping from the fridge and sprinkle it evenly over the top of each muffin. Fill the the remaining 3 empty muffin cups up to the halfway point with water. This step just ensures even weight and moisture distribution! It's optional if you're feeling lazy ;)
  • Bake the strawberry crumble muffins for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick/paring knife poked into the center of one comes out clean. Let the muffins cool completely in the pan before eating.

Recipe Notes

  • You can substitute light or dark brown sugar for the coconut palm sugar. White whole wheat can be substituted with light spelt or any wheat-based flour.
  • The coconut palm sugar provides most of the structure for the muffin, so unfortunately I cannot recommend how you would go about replacing it with maple/other liquid sweeteners.
  • I don’t recommend using oil in place of the vegan butter with the crumble topping! From my experience, crumble toppings that use oil always get super hard or just fall right off of muffins.
  • If you want to go all vegan butter for this recipe, you can definitely replace the ¼ cup oil with ¼ cup melted and cooled vegan butter.
  • Any chopped up or naturally small summer fruit is great in this recipe. Peaches, blueberries etc!
Vegan strawberry crumble muffins are tender, full of fruit, and perfectly finished with a buttery and crunchy pecan topping.