JACKPOT bakes gluten free and vegan banana and raspberry quinoa muffins

Hello dear readers!

Happy Friday! I’m glad the weekend has finally come around again and cannot wait to have another enjoyable one! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend too! ;P

I thought I’d share with you all one of my recent baking experiments. I recently purchased some quinoa flour (pronounced KEEN-WAH) and wanted to bake some gluten-free muffins after tasting one at the Eveleigh Markets on the weekend. It inspired me to make my own version of a gluten-free muffin which happened to also be vegan as well.

I had some ripe bananas sitting on my bench top and some raspberries in the fridge so decided to make banana and raspberry muffins using the quinoa flour. Quinoa flavour has quite a distinct taste and I think it is more an acquired taste. This first batch of muffins turned out alright in terms of texture and flavours however I definitely think that I needed to add a bit more sweetness to the mixture to counteract the tartness from the raspberries and the strong flavour of the quinoa flavour. I adapted my recipe from Bob’s Red Mill who specialise in various flours (http://www.bobsredmill.com/recipes.php?recipe=7020) but didn’t use any eggs as I was trying to make my muffins vegan as well as gluten-free. I think that I will experiment more with my recipe and tweak it until I get the flavours just right however for a healthy gluten-free and vegan muffin, this wasn’t so bad ;P

JACKPOT’s gluten-free and vegan banana and raspberry quinoa muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of quinoa flour
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1/2 tsp of baking soda
• 1-2 tsps of ground cinnamon
• a pinch of salt
• 1 cup of soy milk (I used almond milk)
• 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup of pure maple syrup (you can use 1/2 a cup if you like a sweeter muffin)
• 3-4 bananas mashed with a fork
• 1 cup of raspberries (fresh or frozen)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Line a muffin tray with cupcake liners and set aside.
3. Mix all your dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt) with a wooden spoon and set aside.
4. Pour a cup of soy milk into a measuring cup or a small bowl and mix together with the apple cider vinegar to create your vegan buttermilk. Leave it for a few minutes until it curdles.
5. Add your vegan buttermilk mixture and the rest of the wet ingredients into a small bowl (maple syrup and mashed bananas) and stir to combine.
6. Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients bowl and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. Be careful not to over mix your batter.
7. Add in the raspberries into your muffin batter and fold them in gently.
8. Using an ice cream scoop or a large spoon, spoon the batter into the cupcake liners about 3/4′s full.
9. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. I baked mine for about 25 minutes as my batch seemed to need longer cooking time.
10. Take your muffins out of the oven and out of the muffin tray and line them on a wire rack to cool.
11. Enjoy!

I’ll definitely be experimenting more with quinoa flour and try to get the right consistencies and flavours but for a first attempt I was quite happy with the results. The fact that this muffin is gluten-free, vegan, has no eggs or oil in the mixture and is dairy free is a big bonus =)

So until next time!

x

Jackie