I didn’t set out to make a vegan muffin. It just happened during the course of testing out ingredient substitutions.  This muffin had some improvements over the previous effort, the inside was a lot closer to a regular muffin than the 1st healthy banana muffin experiment.  But I’ve discovered something disheartening during these substitution tests.

An ingredient that reduces calories will up the sodium or the fat, or an ingredient to replace dairy will raise the values I’m trying to lower.  It seems you can have one or the other, but not both.  (Not that I’ve tried everything, but based on my experiments so far, when something goes down, something else goes up.)  It’s rather annoying.

These new muffins weight in at:

This is still much better than a muffin from a fast food restaurant, but it has more calories, fat, carbs, sodium, and sugar than it’s non-vegan predecessor.  Wuah!

Before you get started: There’s a thorough explanation on substituting flaxseeds for egg whites on this great resource Vegan Baking.

Time required: 30 min

Yields: 12

Total cost if you have none of the ingredients:  $45-ish

Cost per muffin: 52 cents

Ingredients:

• 4 large bananas
• 188 grams organic sprouted spelt flour
• 25 grams granulated Splenda
• 60 grams red palm oil + 4 oz water
• 5 grams baking powder
• 4 grams pure vanilla extract
• 10 g ground flax seed + 1.5 oz warm water

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 176°c or 350°f.  Grease the muffin tin well.

2. Whisk warm water into the flaxseed and let stand 10 min.  It will turn into sludge. Yummy!

3. Meanwhile mash the bananas, then beat in the Splenda, red palm oil, water, and vanilla.  Once the flaxseed sludge is ready, add it to the wet mixture and beat until combined.

Wowzers this looks vile.

4. In a seperate bowl, stir the baking powder into the spelt flour, then add gradually to wet mixture.

5. Bake 24-26 minutes. Tah-dah!

Verdict:

Loved these.  The consistency isn’t overly chewy like last time.  There’s a very slight graininess to them, which I suspect is the flaxseed.  The muffins rose quite high in the oven and collapsed to hockey puck height when they came out.

I let them sit out overnight and in the morning, the outside was firm but not hard, the inside was still moist.  This was definitely a muffin that impressed more when it was oven-fresh, but still good the next day.

I don’t foresee making them this way again due to the calorie and fat content. They were really good though!

Do you know of any ingredient substitutes that improve the nutritional values?