Happy Easter everyone! I’m not very traditional about Easter but I’m as happy as the next person to have a holiday to celebrate. Especially since most holidays are food oriented.

Yesterday, despite feeling a little drained from my run, I decided to experiment with a new spring feeling muffin. Since we weren’t going to be doing anything big today for Easter, there was no real reason for me to make anything decadent. I really don’t need to be eating an entire cake on my own.

So I opted for muffins, which for some reason sound healthier in my mind.

Since Easter is a carrot holiday (bunnies – carrots), I decided to do a carrot muffin.

Now I don’t know about you but the number one determining factor when I go to cook is not what do I want to eat but what do I have in my fridge.

Yesterday it turned out I had some lemonade I needed to clear out so all of a sudden my carrot muffins were getting a lemony addition. But that started to pair well in my mind. The lemonade would add the perfect tang to off set the sweet. Bingo! This could work!

I thought about looking at a recipe but since I typically have to make vegan substitutions anyways, I decided to just wing it.

As I’ve mentioned before, vegan baking is a tricky business. I probably get it right about five times out of ten and that’s okay with me. I’m the only one who’s going to be eating these after all 🙂

For almost anything you can imagine, there is a vegan swap. The trick is pairing the right ones together and not leaving out a crucial part of the ingredient list.

The simplest and most frequently used swap in my house is the flax egg.

You can buy whole flax seeds at almost any health food store and lots of regular grocery stores carry it too these days. Buy it as whole seeds and grind it yourself to ensure freshness. How to grind? Easy peasy. Use your coffee grinder. Just make sure to clean the grinder before and after so you don’t contaminate your coffee with flax and vice versa. Keep your flax grindings in the refrigerator in a tupperware container to keep the fats from going bad.

To make a flax egg, combine one TBS ground flax with two TBS warm water in a small bowl and let it sit until it’s congealed. It will start like this:

And end up like this:

And we’re off with the baking!

While they turned out all right, I’m not sure I want to post the recipe. The flavors were spot on but the insides were too dense. The wrapper didn’t want to part with the muffin.

As someone who relies on recipes from blogs a lot, I put a lot of trust in my internet companions. If I try one bad recipe from a site, I’ll give it another chance. Two bad recipes? I’m no longer interested. As such, I won’t be posting recipes that I know have flaws.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not happily munching away on muffins over here. Gotta do something to avoid that pile of chocolate from Will’s mom.