Vegan Matcha Muffins with Chocolate Chips

This is from my personal experience - but whenever people hear the word 'vegan', they run away. I don't know why...maybe because they think I use some funky ingredient instead of using any animal product? And I do agree that some vegan recipe uses weird stuff like "margarine" - now I call that a weird ingredient because it's made out of hydrogenated oil. Now hydrogenated oil (aka Transfat) is something that you should be avoiding because this was chemically made so that it makes the oil less likely to spoil. And another bad news is that it can raise your LDL ("bad") cholesterol and lower your HDL ("good") cholesterol.
Well, the good news is that I don't use any of those. I think I'd rather use butter than use  margarine; however, since this is a Nobutterbaking blog, I won't be using butter but moreso something natural like regular canola oil, yogurt, apple sauce, pumpkin puree...etc. So I hope you enjoy what real ingredients I use to make your everyday desserts (:

Let me explain a little bit more about "Matcha". Matcha is basically a finely powdered green tea. This was originally used during traditional Japanese tea ceremonies but now in the modern world, this green tea powder can be used as flavoring, food coloring, or even decorations. I really like using this for cupcakes, cookies, and even for mochi. There's many ways to use this powder and hopefully in the future I will be able to show you all the many ways that I use Matcha (:

Servings: Dozen regular sized cupcake pan

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 2 Tablespoon matcha (green tea) powder
• 2/3 cup sugar  
• 2 Tablespoon ground flax seed + 6 Tablespoon of water (KEY egg replacement ingredient)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used canola oil) 
• 2/3 cup soy  milk 
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup chocolate chip (if you want to go 100% vegan, use vegan chocolate chip. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips because I didn't have any vegan ones) 

Instructions: 

• Preheat oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 
• In a small bowl, mix all the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt, and matcha powder and whisk it well. 
• In a large bowl, mix in the ground flax seed and water and whisk it until it makes a slimy consistency. **Remember that this is the egg-replacement ingredient! 1 egg = 1 Tablespoon flax seed + 3 Tablespoon of water. Since this recipe includes 2 eggs, I just doubled the amount of flax seed and water** 
• Once the flax seed and water is well mixed, mix in the sugar, followed by oil, soy milk, and vanilla extract. Remember that mixing all of these ingredients one at a time is the key to a successful muffin (: 
• Next, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in about 3-4 increments. **You don't want do just dump the entire dry ingredients or else it will be too lumpy and it won't as rise as well as it should**
• Then slowly fold in the chocolate chips. 
• Fill in the cupcake pan and leave a bout a quarter of a space. 
• You can leave some chocolate chips and put a few of the chips on top of the batter (like I did!) 
• Bake for about 15-20 minutes - make sure you use a toothpick to make sure that it's baked all the way through. 

That's it! You are done (: 

This is the ground flax seed + water mixture (egg replacement) 

The consistency will be a little bit smooth but that's ok!

Finished product! 

I just love the color that the matcha powder gives this product. I'm not a huge fan of using food coloring as well so this is such a great natural way to give your baked goods a little "pop" and originality (:  

The thing that surprised me about this is that I never thought of a combination between matcha and chocolate - and to be honest, they actually taste really well together! I guess chocolate never cease to disappoint me (: 

With that being said, thank you for checking out my blog! 

From my kitchen to yours, Happy Baking! 

Smiles, 

Mei