Another week, another quick Monday bake. Here’s something you can throw together after lunch, and have ready for a semi-healthy afternoon tea break snack when you’re working from home.

This is an eggless, vegan recipe that uses frozen blueberries, so it’s handy if eggs and fresh fruit are in short supply right now where you live. There’s no compromise on flavour though, and they’re very easy to make.

Blueberry, lemon & poppy seed muffins recipe

Makes 12 standard sized muffins.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 3 tbsp water
• 125ml almond milk
• 5 tbsp (75ml) sunflower oil
• 250g self raising flour
• 125g caster sugar
• small pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp poppy seeds
• finely grated zest from 1 lemon
• 140g frozen blueberries

Alternative ingredients:

I haven’t seen fresh blueberries around here for a while, but if you’ve been lucky enough to get hold of some then they’ll work just as nicely in this recipe.

If you don’t need a vegan recipe and you have have eggs, just omit the chia and water mixture and use one large beaten egg with no waiting around.

No almond milk? This recipe works with soya milk, cow’s milk or oatmilk too.

No lemons? You can also use one or two drops of lemon flavouring to get the right taste, or use the finely grated zest of half an orange instead. Make a plan to use the lemon up soonish if you do zest it, so it doesn’t go to waste at the back of the fridge.

If you only have plain flour, use 240g of this plus 2 teaspoons of baking powder to get the same effect. Can be made with wholemeal flour too.

The poppy seeds are nice but not essential, so it’s fine to omit them if you don’t have any.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C / 160 C fan / Gas 4.
2. Line a standard muffin tin with 12 paper cups, or grease a silicone muffin tray.
3. Mix the chia seeds well with the water and set aside for 15 minutes to thicken, to make a vegan egg replacer.
4. Add the milk, oil and lemon zest to the chia ‘egg’ and mix well.
5. In a separate bowl, make the dry mixture by thoroughly stirring together the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and poppy seeds.
6. Quickly add the blueberries to the dry mix, then add the chia, milk and oil mix to the dry ingredients to make a thick batter. It will be a bit lumpy, so don’t worry about making it completely smooth.
7. Divide mixture evenly between the 12 cups in the muffin tray, and bake for around 25 minutes (until a cocktail stick pushed into the middle of a muffin comes out clean.

These are very popular in our house, and we especially like them with a little granulated sugar and cinnamon sprinkled over the top before baking. Are you going to have a go at making my blueberry, lemon & poppy seed muffins?