Procedure1 Preheat oven to 350F for 15 minutes. Grease a 8 inch square baking dish. In a small bowl combine the almonds, brown sugar and cinnamon; set aside. The butter can be melted on stove top or microwave oven or even in the oven while it’s preheating.

2 Combine together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl.

3 Measure the buttermilk in a liquid measuring cup (or any other bowl). To that add the melted butter, vinegar, extracts and applesauce. Whisk until well blended. If you add the butter while its still hot, the mixture will look curdled, but its okay.

4 Stir the wet ingredients into dry ingredients until just moistened. Fold in 2/3 cup blueberries. If using frozen blueberries, do not thaw before adding to batter, because the color will bleed.

5 Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Top with remaining blueberries. Sprinkle the almond mixture on top. Tap the pan lightly a couple times so that the topped blueberries and almonds sticks to the batter.

6 Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool the pan on a wire rack.

7 Remove the cake from the pan after 10 minutes and transfer the cake directly to the wire rack. The cake is quite light, so you will have to be very careful while tilting the pan. A couple of almonds will fall down.

Taste I have baked a lot in the past one year but this blueberry coffee cake will definitely make it to the Top 5 if I prepare such a list. I’m not exaggerating here but it was unbelievably good. So good that my husband asked for seconds and had it too! This has never happened before. I didn’t have almond extract, I think it would have tasted even better with it.

This cake doesn’t rise much, around 1/2-3/4th inch only. As for the texture, it was very lighty and fluffy, unusual for an egg less cake. I think the vinegar did the trick. The sweetness was perfect, the addition of almonds gave a nice crunch to the cake. The only thing to look for while baking this cake is that it’s very light and has to be handled very carefully while removing from the pan.

My Notes1 The original recipe had mentioned 2/3 cup buttermilk, which is what I did for the first batch and as I have mentioned earlier, the cake was so fluffy that I felt that it would fall apart while removing from the pan. I had to be very careful. So while preparing the next batch (yes we liked it so much that I baked it again the next day to share it with my new friends here) I reduced the quantity of buttermilk to 1/2 cup and this time it was quite manageable.

The cake is very light (just like a cake with eggs) when kept at room temperature. It hardens up a little when stored in the refrigerator. So I was thinking that the next time I bake it, I would cool it in the fridge itself, so that removing it from the pan will be easy.

2 If you leave the cake in the pan itself for much longer time, the bottom of the cake will become soggy from the heat and the condensation. It happened to my first batch and I had to blot it with paper towel.

3 I think this recipe without the blueberries would make a perfect eggless white cake.

Procedure 1 Preheat the oven to 375F (see My Notes) for 15 minutes. Lightly
grease a muffin tin.

2 In a medium bowl, combine together flour, baking soda, salt and lemon zest.

3 In a large bowl, combine the sugar, milk, oil, extract, and vinegar. Mix well.

4 Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stir until just combined. Don’t over stir.

5 Gently fold in the berries using a rubber spatula.

6 Fill the muffin tins about 2/3rds full.

7 Bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, about 22 minutes.

8 Remove from the oven and let it cool for 5 minutes. After that remove the muffins from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

My Notes 1 I didn’t want to bake 2 batches when I started. What happened was I didn’t read the recipe properly and poured the measured sugar on top of the flour instead of mixing it with the wet ingredients. I continued with it anyway and saw that the muffins began to brown very much around 12 minutes itself. The original recipe had mentioned to bake it at 400F. So I reduced the oven temperature to 375F. I thought that adding sugar to the flour was the reason and so I baked another batch following the instructions correctly. Even then the same thing happened. That’s when I realized that the oven temperature was the culprit. That’s the reason I have changed the temperature to 375F in the procedure. Later I was going through a whole wheat banana muffin recipe in The Joy of Baking website and there it was mentioned that baking that muffin directly in a muffin tin without the paper liner would yield a crusty and brownish muffins but it would soften later. The same thing happened in these blueberry muffins too. So you may also try lining the muffin tins with a paper liner, instead of pouring the batter in the greased molds.

2 Regarding sugar, the original recipe itself mentions 3/4-1 cup. For the first batch I used 3/4 cup because the vegan strawberry cupcakes which I tried earlier from the same book used 1 cup sugar and was very sweet. The sweetness of the blueberry muffins were perfect for us, but it may not be enough for everybody, especially if the blueberries are very sour. So for the second batch (I had already decided to give it to my neighbors, because I didn’t want to have it at home and gain weight) I decided to increase the quantity of sugar. I used little more than 3/4 cup and little less than 1 cup. That was good too.

3 I used frozen blueberries. Thawing is not necessary. Add it to the muffin batter directly from the freezer, but do not over mix, or else it would start bleeding.