Gingerbread muffins with ginger icing

So, Christmas is near and I normally don’t celebrate much… but I love hot chocolate, anything with ginger, and the food ehehe. This year, we will be reuniting both our families for the holidays, so this will be interesting and fun. I still need to decide what I will cook or bake.

I haven’t baked in quite a while because we have been on the go so much. I also got quite sick about two weeks ago and I am still fighting off a cold. The other day I wanted to bake something and was uninspired by what I saw online… but it seems that the inspiration is back!

So, as I try to get into the holiday spirit, I decided to get festive, but also to stay healthy. I modified these from Living Lou and made them vegan. I also created this icing that gives the muffins an extra kick!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 2 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 3/4 cup almond milk +1 tbsp lemon juice or apple cider (buttermilk)
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/3 cup coconut oil
• 1 tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 tbsp water (or 1 egg)
• sprinkles or any festive decorations you may want to add

Ginger icing:

• 1 teaspoon coconut oil (at room temperature)
• 1/2 tablespoon ginger concentrate (either juice the ginger, or I soaked grated ginger in hot water)
• Confectioners sugar.

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375. Line a standard 12-muffin tin.
2. To make the butter milk, in a measuring cup add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Then, fill the cup with almond milk (or regular milk, or coconut milk). Let sit for about 10 minutes.
3. In a small bowl, combine the ground flaxseed and water. Mix well and let sit for about 5 minutes.
4. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and cloves.
5. In a large bowl, whisk the buttermilk with the molasses, oil and egg.
6. Pour the dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Mix well until incorporated, but do not overmix the batter.
7. Scoop into 10 lined muffin cups.
8. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out dry.
9. To make the icing, combine the sugar and coconut oil. Add the ginger concentrate little by little. You do not want to add it all at once and continue to mix until  the coconut oil does not make any clumps and until you reach the desired consistency. Sorry, my proportions are not exact since I always make the icing by texture, not by measurement… I will try and get more precise measurements next time, I promise.