Banana and coconut muffins

I have been working on recipes for an interactive virtual plant based cooking lesson for World Earth day 2020. These muffins are quite easy to make, even though they seem to have a lot of ingredients. The ingredients can easily be swapped out to make them gluten free, nut free or even sugar free. Add some raspberries, chocolate or cinnamon to mix up the taste. They are soft straight from the oven so its better to let them cool before enjoying, with a cup of tea.

This recipe was a slight variation from the recipe that was given to me to cook for Melinda Gates during her visit to Australia. The original recipe contained oat flour and maple syrup.  I found the original recipe a little heavy, so I changed the oat flour to plain flour.  The muffin isn’t too sweet, as it’s low in refined cane sugar and low in animal fats such as eggs, butter or vegetable oil. It has quite a bit of fruit in it which makes it quite delicious and almost healthy.

Dry ingredients

• 100g Almond meal

• 90g Plain Flour

• 20g LSA (can be omitted)

• 6g baking powder

• Pinch Salt

• 45g Coconut sugar or caster sugar

• 35g quinoa flakes (add extra almond if un available)

• 20g coconut flakes/shredded coconut

Wet ingredients

• 150g Coconut yogurt,

• 80g Rice syrup/maple syrup

• 1 large banana

• 120g apple sauce or tinned apple.

• 1 tsp vanilla

Method

1. Grease and line 12 muffin cups or tins, heat oven to 180-degree celsius.

2. In a bowl mash the banana with a fork.

3. Add the rest of the wet ingredients and mix until combined.  This might be a little lumpy.

4. Combine all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and mix together.

5. Gently mix the two together until just mixed.

6. Don’t over mix as muffin may be come tough and chewy.

7. Spoon into muffin tin, each muffin should be 2/3 to 3/4 full.

8. Gently tap down the tin.

9. Top with a little extra coconut and quinoa.

10. Bake at 180 for around 12 to 15 minutes.  Allow to cool.