You won’t find any mini muffins around here. If you are going to indulge in a banana-pecan muffin for breakfast, it needs to be worth your while. We’re talking big, hearty and satisfying. Perfect as they are, but even better split and smeared with nut butter!
Makes 8 large muffins
Ingredients
- A little vegan butter, coconut oil or any other neutral oil, for pan (optional)
- 3 medium very ripe and spotty bananas
- ¼ cup soft, drippy, room-temperature cashew, almond or pecan butter or coconut oil
- 1 Tbsp. blackstrap molasses
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- ½ cup cane or granulated white sugar, plus more for sprinkling tops (optional)
- ½ tsp. salt
- 2 cups spelt flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- ½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts, plus more for sprinkling tops (optional)
Directions
Preheat the oven to 425°F and grease or line 8 wells of a muffin pan.
Chop just three-quarters of one of the bananas into small pieces and set aside. Put the rest of the bananas in a mixing bowl and mash them until they are puréed. You can also do this by hand with a fork.
Add the nut butter, blackstrap molasses, vanilla, sugar and salt to the puréed bananas and beat well.
Add the spelt flour and baking powder and stir everything together by hand. It’s important not to overmix. Stir just enough that you can’t see any dry flour.
Add the reserved chopped banana along with the nuts and stir gently to incorporate.
Spoon evenly into the prepared muffin pan. Sprinkle a few more nuts and a little sugar onto the top of each muffin if you want.
Bake at 425°F for 5 minutes; then lower the oven temperature to 375°F and bake for a further 15 to 18 minutes. The muffins should be well risen, golden and a toothpick inserted into the middle should come out clean.
Notes
To make these muffins nut-free, use sunflower seed butter, pumpkin seed butter or coconut oil instead of the nut butter and replace the nuts with vegan chocolate chips, pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds.
You can bake the batter in a 9 x 5–inch loaf pan at 350°F for around 50 minutes to make banana bread instead of muffins.
Nutrition facts per muffin: Calories 246; protein 6 g; fat 5 g; carbs 49 g.
Reprinted with permission from Vegan Comfort Cooking by Melanie McDonald, Page Street Publishing Co. 2019.
