Gests for Christmas – Yoana

These pre-Christmas days are a great time to visit your friends in their lovely-decorated homes, to chat sweetly for a while and to enjoy together a cup of tea and Christmas cookies.

Thesе good old traditions would never be the same after Internet changed the way we communicate. Today we socialize more but meet less. Whether this is good or bad is a long discussion and not a subject of today’s post.

What I want to share instead is that I decided to use Internet’s powers and to invite as virtual guests a few fascinating ladies who in the next couple of weeks will pass by for a virtual tea and a friendly Christmas chat.

My first guest is Yoana – a famous Bulgarian blogger, featuring magazine articles and participating in TV programs. Yoana also works with the most famous bakery in Sofia for hand-made bread and sweets prepared in a healthy way of whole-grain flours, brown sugar, honey or agave. If you happen to pass by Sofia, make sure to visit Sun Moon.

Especially for you Yoana made these fragrant vegan muffins with orange icing.

Vegan muffins with orange icing

12 muffins

For the muffins:

• 250 ml. vanilla organic-soya milk
• 200 gm brown sugar muscovado
• 100 gm coconut sreds
• 100gm vegan chocolate drops
• 80 gm dry cherries, chopped
• 150 gm wholegrain spelt flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp grounded nutmeg
• zest of one orange

Line 12 muffin forms with paper cups. Heat the oven at 180°C

Mix the milk and the sugar in a pan and heat the sugar is melted. Let it coll down, pour in a bowl and mix with the vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl combine the flours, the coconut shreds, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and orange zest. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and carefully combine. Fold in the cherries and the chocolate drops.

Bake for 25 minutes, leave in the forms for 2-3 minutes and transfer on a rack to cool down.

For the icing:

• 180 gm raw cashew
• 50 ml fresh orange juice
• 50 ml honey or agave
• 1 tbs melted coconut oil
• 2 tbs orange jam

Pour the cashew in the food processor and process it finely. Add the orange juice and mix until it reaches a paste consistency. Add the honey/agave, the coconut oil and the jam to the paste. Mix everything well.

Decorate the cooled muffins with the icing and top with coconut shreds or orange zest.