Grain Free Banana Muffin

This Recipe is: Free of gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, and peanuts. It is also vegan and can be easily adjusted for the paleo diet.

Another banana recipe? I must be going bananas! Well going bananas wouldn’t be right. That ship has long sailed. I have GONE bananas. 🙂 Anyhoo… yes another banana recipe. Because sometimes I buy too many bananas and forget about them while they are ripening then all of a sudden it’s almost too late and oh my goodness I need to use the bananas. That’s where this recipe came from. That, oh my gosh I need to use these bananas, moment.

I didn’t want to use my normal flour blend and just make my typical muffin recipe. I really wanted something different. Something with a chewy more multigrain texture. I love to use almond meal for that since it is so grainy but in the best way possible. Since I was using almond meal I figured, hey why I don’t I just go completely grain free for these bad boys. Well that was my train of thought, hope you enjoy the end result! I sure did!

Makes about 12 (fills about 1 1/2 muffin pans)

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon ground flax-seed + 3 tablespoons water (you can also make an Ener-G egg re-placer egg if that’s what you have on hand)
• 1 cup almond meal
• 3/4 cup garbanzo bean flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 bananas
• 2/3 cup almond milk
• 2/3 cup coconut sugar (can substitute with brown sugar if you prefer)
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup walnuts smashed
• 1/4 cup seed mix (I used Enjoy Life seed and fruit mix)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degress F. and grease 2 muffin pans.
2. Mix your ground flax-seed and water and set aside to let thicken.
3. In a large bowl whisk together almond meal, garbanzo bean flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. In a medium-sized bowl smash bananas with a fork. You when them completely broken down. It’s important you do this with a fork or potato masher instead of in a blender, because you are not pureeing the bananas. You are mashing the bananas. Pureed would make batter too thin.
5. Add the milk, coconut sugar, olive oil and vanilla extract to the smashed bananas. Mix very well until combined, a whisk works well here.
6. Poor the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until combined. Add the walnuts and seed mix and mix once more until just combined.
7. Scoop into greased muffin pans filling almost to the top. Bake for about 25 – 35 minutes. Please note that the almond meal browns quickly, but that DOES NOT mean they are done (I made that mistake at first). They will be somewhat soft once finished because of all the bananas but they will be firm. The tops do drop, don’t worry about it though!
8. Enjoy!