Maple (veggie)Bacon Muffins

Today marks the first official day of my spring break, which is actually quite anticlimactic because I'm just staying home and practicing a whole lot and not doing much of anything too exciting.  BUT, it does mean that I have plenty of time to browse food blogs and make some delicious stuff.  Today I spent way more time than I should have looking up lots of recipes, and during my perusing I came across maple bacon muffins. 
Before I talk any more about the recipe, I just need to say that I love bacon.  Not the fresh-from-a-pig kind, but the Morningstar Farms brand fake bacon.  I put it in sandwiches.  I mix it with baked beans.  I eat it with maple syrup next to my scrambled tofu.  Heck, I just eat it plain.  And now, I can proudly say that I even put it in muffins.  Which brings me back to the muffins (I love circular trains of thought).

I found the original recipe on evilshenanigans, one of my favorite foodblogger sites, even though it's definitely not one of the healthier ones.  I made a lot of substitutions, starting with the whole bacon thing, but then ending up basically veganizing it because I don't have any real milk or eggs.  I also only made a half batch, because I wasn't sure how it was going to come out with all the substitutions, but they were delicious.  The muffins were really moist and crumbly, and I didn't miss any of the original ingredients, so here I'll post the full recipe.  I'm sorry I ever doubted you, maple bacon muffins.  Lesson learned.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 slices veggie bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
1 cup soymilk
3 Tbs applesauce (equivalent of 2 eggs)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup real maple syrup (I cheated and used the fake kind, but I think real would be better)

Directions:
Mix together the first 4 ingredients while the bacon is cooking, then crumble the bacon and add it to the bowl. 
Combine all the wet ingredients (I like to just use 1 measuring cup and keep adding to it, to save myself washing more dishes later). 
Make a well in the flour mixture and then add in the wet mixture, and stir until just combined.  It will be a little lumpy, but that's okay.
Spray and flour a muffin tin, and then bake at 400F for about 20 minutes.  When done, a toothpick inserted into the middle should come out clean, and the tops should be lightly browned.

Notes about this recipe:
Next time I make this I think I will add an extra slice or two of bacon, because sometimes the bacon flavor was just a bit too subtle for my liking.
The only applesauce I had was cinnamon applesauce, and it still came out fine.
Maybe it's because I used fake maple syrup instead of real, but I wanted a stronger maple flavor.  I ended up putting a little syrup on top of the muffin when I ate it just to enhance the flavor a bit.  And to its credit, the muffin was wonderfully obliging in soaking up the syrup so the flavors really blended together.