Lactose-free, vegetarian, vegan. Sounds like dry bread washed down with water? Wrong, wrong, wrong. My dairy-free lemon muffins are vegan, vegetarian and lactose-free by chance. Neither eggs nor milk are needed for happiness, as the perfect sweet and sour taste of fluffy, beautifully rising muffins tickles the palate.

As usual, my lemon muffin recipe is very easy (I can’t bake, so it can’t be difficult), quick and doesn’t require dirtying a lot of pots and pans ;).

Ingredients for lactose-free lemon muffins

Wet ingredients

(for a larger bowl to also hold the dry ingredients):

200 ml of orange/mandarin juice from the day before (I squeezed the juice from 2 large mandarins – at Biedronka, I would bet my life that they were oranges, that’s the kind of cook I am)

juice from 1 lemon

4 large flat tablespoons of coconut oil melted in the microwave (or another oil)

1 tablespoon of spirit (yes, yes, you read that right – you can leave it out if you’re making this for kids)

2 large tablespoons of honey

Dry ingredients:

1½ cups of wheat flour (I used cake flour)

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 cup grated or briefly blended (to a coarse powder) nuts (I used cashews)

1 teaspoon baking powder

5 large level tablespoons brown sugar

Grated zest of two lemons (only the yellow part)

Preparation:

Mix the wet ingredients in a larger bowl.

Mix the dry ingredients in a smaller bowl.

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring continuously (the dough has a consistency that does not require a mixer, whisk or other gadgets – the main thing is to mix the ingredients until they are fairly uniform).

Bake on convection for 20 minutes in an oven preheated to 180 degrees

Bake for another 5 minutes at the same temperature, but on the ‘bottom heater’

The ingredients listed above will make 6 large, filling lemon muffins.

Lemon muffins, lemon cupcakes calories and macronutrients

How many calories are there in lemon muffins?

1 piece prepared according to the above recipe

Kcal: 366.7 Protein: 8.6g Carbohydrates: 48.2g Fat: 15g

Homemade baked goods and weight loss

The above values are surprisingly high, aren’t they? After all, I could advertise these lemon muffins as a healthy, diet-friendly substitute for store-bought products.

It’s true – my lemon muffins are much healthier and much lower in calories than their shop-bought counterparts. But does that make them a low-calorie product? No.

It is important to remember that even homemade, healthy baked goods are high in calories and simple sugars. If you want to lose weight, you cannot treat them as an addition to your afternoon coffee. One lemon muffin has almost 400 calories, which is comparable to a two-egg omelette with lots of vegetables, a teaspoon of oil and a slice of wholemeal bread.

Remember that the calorie count is for one cupcake only. The recipe makes six. Imagining a situation where I eat them all (while still warm!) at once does not seem like a scene from a science fiction film to me. Not so long ago, this could have happened. And I would have consumed 2,200 kilocalories.

Now, eating consciously and respecting the effort I put into my training, I will eat one muffin. As part of my second breakfast.

Everything is good for you, but in moderation! Homemade baked goods are a good alternative to shop-bought sweets full of trans fats, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, glucose-fructose syrup and other wonders that should never even be near food. But you can’t eat them in unlimited quantities.

Well, you can. But then you can’t complain that your diet isn’t working.

Disclaimer: Dit artikel bevat een betaalde samenwerking of reclame.