Vegan Cinnamon Applesauce Muffins

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Hello friends! These yummy vegan cinnamon applesauce muffins are inspired by the subject of my current Bible study. Say WHAT?! Yup, you heard right… I made these muffins as a direct result of doing “Chapter 1: Food,” in Jen Hatmaker’s “The 7 Experiment: staging your own mutiny against excess.”

The point of the study is to help us understand just how much God has a heart for the poor, the disenfranchised, the underprivileged… basically anyone who has no voice and cannot stand up for him or herself. In today’s world that would look like most people who live in 3rd world countries, refugees, people (especially children) living below the poverty line… you get what my point.

In the US, and most of the “Western” world (I’m including you folks in Australia & NZ also), most of us are wealthy beyond measure. Even if we don’t feel like we are because we’re still struggling to sock away enough savings to put our 3 kids through college within a 7 year time frame (speaking for a friend here.)

Never mind that we’ve never gone hungry a single day or a single meal in our lives. Never mind that I can stand in my pantry literally surrounded by food and think to myself, “We have nothing to eat!” Chapter 1 of “Seven” deals with our Western excess of food. Jen gently asks us to go count the number of food items we currently have in our pantries and fridges. She had something like 240 and was appalled at herself.

I stopped counting at 500… before I was halfway done.

Jen, you got nothing on me… and I am not proud of it. I’m coming face to face with my mindset about food, and it smacks of excess, hoarding, entitlement, and “scarcity mentality”- ya know, like if I see my favourite almond milk at S&R (our equivalent of Costco), I feel justified in buying 3 cases, because God forbid I should ever run out.

We never run out of anything! On the contrary, we have so much food stored up that as I’ve been going through my pantry this week, I realise I’ve let dozens of items expire… by a year or more… simply because I’ve forgotten they were in there.

So what in the heck does this have to do with MUFFINS, you ask??? I’m so glad you asked, and thank you by the way, for still reading. I appreciate you!

Jen suggests that we stage our own “mutiny against excess” in whatever way we feel led, and in this area of food, I’ve decided to either eat or use something from our current food stores every time I eat. This means the stale cereal languishing in the back of the pantry because it had too many carbs for my prep diet… it means allll the random grains I’ve bought thinking I would do something “different & interesting” with them, but for the last 10 months I could only be bothered to cook rice & pasta… this also means finding some way to use up the approximately 25 pounds of protein powder I’ve accumulated over my time in competitive bodybuilding. Sheesh.

Then, since this will cut down my grocery bill, I’ll invest the savings in Kiva, a micro lending company that helps entrepreneurs around the world start small businesses. You can start with as little as $25; however, I feel like I’m gonna have waaaay more than that in the savings this pantry’s been holding onto. This won’t be for just a week like in our study… oh no, I’m just getting started here. I’m guessing it will take me about 6-9 months to be closer to where I want to be. And it won’t end there. This will be a new way of living. Less of us (& our entitled food habits) and more of the things that matter to God.

So these muffins are just one example of what I can make (and share!) with what I currently have on hand:

  • unsweetened applesauce
  • flaxseed meal (I have 2 huge bags of seeds that will probably last a year)
  • date sugar (along with coconut sugar, muscavado sugar, regular brown sugar, white sugar, honey, maple syrup, and agave)
  • spices
  • whole wheat flour that I ground from wheat berries… one of those “interesting grains” I never got around to
  • raisins & walnuts (keeping company with myriad other dried fruits & nuts)
  • almond butter (hoarding mentality- I have 4 jars unopened in the pantry)
  • almond milk (yup, out of those 3 cases…)
  • vanilla (I have 5 opened bottles of vanilla… heaven help me)
  • baking powder, soda, & salt

Healthy, yes, and super simple to whip up: mix your dry ingredients in one bowl, your wet ingredients in another, mix it all together (taking care not to overmix,) and bake. The whole process took me less than 30 minutes.

These little muffins are hearty, lightly sweet, and fragrant with cinnamon & nutmeg. They are perfect for breakfast or snacking… or in my case, serving at our next meeting of “Seven.” Even better, they go great with all 11 jams (plus honey!) that I have open in my fridge…

Cheers folks, here’s to looking beyond.

3 thoughts on “Vegan Cinnamon Applesauce Muffins”

  1. Rebecca! Love this blog entry..I want to make these soon. They seem very filling and yummy.
    Christmas is coming soon! I wonder what you are up to in the kitchen these ber months 🙂

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