Lightly sweet and packed with fresh strawberries, these vegan strawberry muffins are so lovely and tender. Whole wheat flour adds substance and you can use any plant-based milk you prefer.

Easy Vegan Strawberry Muffins Recipe

Fickle weather this week in San Francisco: A few glorious mornings of sunshine have been tempered by the usual and omnipresent fog, reminding me of just how chilly the summer months can be here. Last August I was in Yosemite for nearly a week and then went to Maine for 2 weeks so by the time I returned in late summer the sun had settled in for the long haul — in other words, I’d forgotten how gloomy this city can be earlier in the month. I’m not really complaining, mind, just observing. I think in a way this fog and mist is a good thing for it helps us appreciate the fleeting, warmer days of summer – and, oh, lovely Indian Summer I await you so very eagerly this year for a variety of reasons – when they come, and consequently we don’t take them for granted. Plus, a lack of intense heat and humidity is always great in my book. (See also: why I moved back to the West Coast eight years ago.) So I will welcome these cooler days, but I will also be grateful for my wool socks.

In Morocco I found myself wishing for muffins at random moments (and the need to wear a scarf, July of course being somewhat of a frigid month here in SF). I won’t call this a craving per se, but more of a feeling of ‘oh, I can’t have this particular thing (insert here blueberries, tofu, hummus, chocolate buttermilk cake, vegan donut, etc.) at whim, thus I will instead become obsessed with the thought of it’. Something along those lines and why I’ve been treating myself to burritos at every opportunity, calories be damned. If I’d had my muffin tin I could have baked a batch of muffins myself … but alas it’s still on a boat somewhere in the vicinity of the Panama Canal and was wholly inaccessible to me in July. Wisely I’d kept back a battered tin in my San Francisco kitchen and so when the urge came upon me – as it very often does – to bake, I unearthed it and gathered my ingredients.

As I may have mentioned, my penchant for sweets continues unabated. And yet, I am also sort of sick of sweets. It’s difficult to explain. For sure I have recently overdosed on ice cream and now the very thought of it makes me feel a bit ill; yet I still wanted a little something to satisfy the yearning and also to warm up the apartment for the time it would take to bake the muffins. On Wednesday afternoon I’d just finished up another – and hopefully final – round of cookbook edits and decided I needed a little bit of a reward to celebrate. I’d also just gotten Kate Christensen’s newish memoir from the library and a read + tea + muffin on the couch seemed just the thing.

I struck a compromise between my need for a sweet treat and my need to at least attempt to be healthy by making a batch of vegan, maple-syrup-sweetened strawberry muffins that, and I’ll admit it unashamedly, might just be the best muffins I’ve ever made. Lightly sweet from the maple syrup but not cloying at all and surprisingly fluffy from the peculiar, wonderful alchemy that occurs when vinegar and baking soda combine, you might not notice these little cakes are sans butter, milk, or eggs. Nor would you miss those ingredients. Rounded out with whole wheat pastry flour, the muffins are hearty and wholesome. They’re also luscious and jammy with fruit and a hint of cinnamon. In short: the muffins of my dreams. And please believe me when I say in earnest I did dream about muffins when I was in Casablanca.

I’m tempted to experiment with using entirely whole wheat pastry flour but the muffins might turn out a bit too crumbly … or at least substitute 1/4-1/2 cup of cornmeal or other whole-wheat flour (spelt, for example) for the all-purpose flour … but really, these are utterly perfect as the recipe stands. Swap in whatever fruit you like — blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, diced peaches, or plums — and play around with the kind of chopped nuts, maybe even use a bit of honey in place of the maple syrup for a flavor twist. I will also note that while I refer to the crumble topping as ‘optional’ I quickly decided after a few bites that it is, in fact, essential.