RECIPE: Coconut flour chocolate chip banana peanut butter muffins (gluten-free)

Coconut flour has been the Thing in the healthy food world for a while now, yet somehow I hadn't got round to trying it out. Shame on me.

So when the Groovy Food Company kindly sent me some of their finest coconut flour to play with, I had no excuse not to get experimenting.

I know, I'm a lucky lady to be sent nice food things.

So, you may be wondering just what the deal is with coconut flour. Well, oh curious one, coconut flour is pure finely-ground coconut flesh. Simple as. It's gluten-free, super high in fibre and protein, unrefined and great for baking as it has a subtle sweetness.

Y'all know I do a lot of vegan baking, often using flax eggs instead of real ones (mainly just cos I don't really eat eggs and ceebs to buy them), but when baking with coconut flour you need legit eggs. They bind everything together, you see.

I'm not averse to buying supermarkets' basics ingredients, but when it comes to eggs, I do think we should all buy free-range. For my 12th birthday, all I wanted was pet chickens. And would you believe it, my parents obliged. I loved those hens like you wouldn't believe (yes, I was a bit of a weird kid).

As the hens have now become my parents' egg laying machines pets back home in the countryside (not the same ones I got for my birthday, mind, chickens don't live that long), I am forced to buy eggs from the supermarket.

When you do, look for British Lion Eggs (not a brand but simply eggs that are stamped with a red lion), as that means they've passed the government's safety standards. They've got a load of enticing looking egg recipes on their website which may actually tempt me to eat more eggs.

So although these muffins aren't vegan, they're pretty gosh darn healthy. But they've got chocolate in! I hear you protest.

Well, you observant one you, I have used Ombar raw dairy-free chocolate which is legit good for you. I kid you not. It's my new fave thing.

Of course, you could just use normal chocolate if you have that to hand, you can still feel pretty virtuous with these muffins.

They're gluten-free, dairy-free and refined sugar-free. HOLLA!

They're also blimmin' delicious. The texture isn't as fluffy as your standard muffin. It's denser, but also somehow cloud-like. Thanks to the three bananas up in there, the muffins are delectably moist. No-one likes a dry muffin.

The peanut butter-chocolate-banana combo is an absolute winner, and I love the subtle coconut addition. Coconut goes with peanut butter (srsly, get the Meridian jar), it goes with banana (ever had a banana colada? thank me later) and it goes with chocolate (helloooooo Bounty!), so it was a no-brainer to whack all those flavours together to create something delicious.

More is always more.

Oh, and don't be put off by the cinnamon - you can't taste it as such, it just adds a certain richness and warmth to the overall flavour.

These muffins are super easy to make btw. I whipped them up on a sunny Saturday morning with my 5SOS playing (yes, I am actually a 14-year-old girl in the body of a grown woman) and it was all really rather delightful.

You may have noticed from the pic at the top of this post that I in fact had two ludicrously ripe bananas and one yellow one. Speckly and brown are the best for these muffins as they're the sweetest, but if all you have is yellow bananas that's OK, but you'll probably want to add a squeeze of agave or honey to add some sweetness.

Hope y'all love them!

This recipe makes eight muffins and was adapted from Ambitious Kitchen.


Ingredients

3 very ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 heaped tbsp coconut peanut butter (or normal)
A squeeze of agave nectar or honey (optional, only if your bananas aren't that ripe)
2 eggs
70g coconut flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
70g dark chocolate, cut into chunks


Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C, line a muffin tray with eight paper cases (or spray with cooking spray), and mash the bananas.

2. Using a hand-held electric mixer, whisk the mashed bananas, vanilla and peanut butter (and agave, if using) together until smooth (and delicious, trust me). Add the eggs one at a time, mixing in between each addition.

3. Add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt and mix until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chunks. The batter will be thick, almost like cookie dough.

4. Spoon into muffin cases, filling them to the top, and bake for approx. 17 minutes, until the tops are turning golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean - you need to make sure you dodge the chocolate chunks though!

5. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about ten minutes in the tin before removing the muffins and placing them on a wire rack to cool fully. Or eating. Because melted chocolate oh my dayyyyys.