Tag Archive for: Baking

A Recipe: Plant-Based Banana Chocolate Muffins (Gluten-Free)

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These muffins may look plain on the outside, but there’s a decadent rich chocolatey centre hiding inconspicuously inside each one. Because chocolate makes everything better, don’t you think?!

They’re great for people with allergies, being vegan and dairy-free, paleo-friendly and gluten-free. They are also full of nutritional goodness; rather than flour and dairy they’re packed with bananas, almonds and flax seeds. Bananas are packed with potassium, magnesium and manganese, and B vitamins including B6 and folate. Almonds are a great source of magnesium, calcium and zinc (as well as many other minerals) and are also high in vitamin E. Flax seeds are super high in omega-3s, B vitamins and minerals including magnesium and selenium.

Did I mention that they’re super tasty too?

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Recipe: Chocolate Surprise Banana Muffins

Makes 10 muffins.

Ingredients

3 bananas (about 300g)
1/4 cup nut milk (I use cashew nut milk – you can make it yourself; it’s super simple)
2 tbsp maple syrup (or other liquid sweetener)
50g macadamia oil (or other high quality flavourless oil)
175g ground almonds
30g ground flax seeds
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp chia seeds

For the chocolate filling:
30g macadamia oil
20g cacao powder
20g maple syrup

What To Do

Preheat your oven to 170ºC.

Blend bananas, maple syrup, cashew nut milk and oil together until smooth. Add the ground almonds, ground flaxseeds and baking powder and mix well.

Put the 1 tbsp chia seeds in a bowl and add 3 tbsp water, stirring well. Leave for 10 minutes or so until the chia has formed a gel.

Separate 1/4 of the cake mixure and place in a separate bowl. If you want to be accurate, use scales. Otherwise guesswork is fine! Stir the chia gel into the larger cake mix portion.

To the 1/4 mixture in the separate bowl add 20g cacao powder, 20g maple syrup and 30g oil and stir until combined.

Put a heaped dessertspoon of cake mix into 10 muffin cases. You should be left with a small amount of cake mix. Using a teaspoon, make a well in the centre of each muffin.

Divide the chocolate mix between the 10 muffins, carefully filling the well in the centre using a teaspoon.

Top each muffin with a thin layer of the remaining cake mix, using a spoon to seal the gaps. You shouldn’t be able to see any of the chocolate mix.
pic12premuffin1 premuffin2 premuffin3 premuffin4 premuffin6Place in a pre-heated oven and bake for 25 minutes until golden.

Enjoy!

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Tips:

  • I used chia seeds to help bind them together as these muffins don’t contain egg. Flax seeds and bananas are also great binders though, so if you can’t find chia seeds just leave this step out.
  • If you think the assembly sounds like too much hassle, don’t stress. Just fill the cake cases with half of the plain mix, add a spoonful of the chocolate one and then top with remaining plain mix. They might not look quite so neat but they’ll still taste amazing!

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How to make your own baking powder

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I started making my own baking powder when I heard that some baking powders contain aluminium. I didn’t want to be eating that. Also, baking powder contains gluten in the form of wheaten cornflour. Some of my family members are coeliac and I like to bake for them, so I need a gluten-free baking powder. That is also aluminium free. And ideally doesn’t come in plastic.

Turns out, baking powder is the easiest thing to make in the world. You need just two ingredients, cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda.  The ratio is 2:1 so 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar needs 1 teaspoon of bicarb.

Mix them together and voila! You have super easy baking powder. Store in a jar in the cupboard until needed.

Some recipes also add 1 part cornstarch too, which means cornflour, but as cornflour is actually made of wheat and not corn (bizarrely) I don’t add this. I have seen a gluten-free cornflour available that is actually made with corn so at some point I might try it, but I think it works fine without.

What else do you need to know? It has a slight tendency to clump because it hasn’t got caking agents added. This isn’t a problem of course, just give the mix a good stir before you use it.

The other great thing is that you can make small batches as you need it, so it doesn’t sit in the cupboard slowly going out of date. No matter how much baking I do, I’ve never been able to use up an entire container of baking powder before I exceed the expiry date, so this suits me much better.

My weekend baking extravaganza

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I set myself a challenge this weekend. I decided to try three new recipes of things that I’ve never made before. I love food and I love cooking (which if you read this blog you’ll probably have noticed) but I often feel like I’m making the same things over and over again. That’s partly true because I get a seasonal veg box delivered, and the contents don’t vary much week to week – especially in winter. I consider myself pretty good at knocking something nutritious and tasty up out of whatever is in the fridge and in the pantry, and I love making recipes up, but when I have the same ingredients I tend to make the same kinds of things.

I was feeling a bit stifled, creatively speaking. I don’t tend to use cookbooks and recipes much apart from special occasions, but I decided maybe this was what I needed to re-spark my culinary inspiration. I decided I’d find three recipes that looked great and that I’d never made before, go shopping for any new ingredients that weren’t already hanging about, and get baking.

I had such a fun time! It was great to make things with new ingredients, and follow other people’s recipes rather than tinkering for hours with my own. I used spelt flour for the first time, made raw vegan chocolate brownies and learned about wakame gomasio. It’s definitely re-sparked my creativity again; I’ve been thinking up new ideas and I’m already planning some variations and new recipes.

Here’s a mini showcase of my weekend (I’m so proud of my efforts I thought I’d take the opportunity to show off!):

rawpasty cookedpasty pasty rawbrowniejpg brownie2 brownie3 brownie4 bars2 slicej bars3 So I have a challenge for you. This weekend, make a recipe that you’ve never made before. Maybe something you’ve been meaning to make for a while. Maybe just flick through some cook books for inspiration. You’ve got a week to find a recipe and make sure you’ve got all the ingredients to hand. Good luck!

In addition to my renewed passion for cooking, the other great thing about the challenge was that I started my week with a fridge full of delicious things to eat. How awesome is that?!