Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Vegan is a bad word to many, visions of crazy hippys wearing tie dye and big circle pink glasses smoking whatever they can find.

Vegan just means made without animals or animal products. So this recipe just doesn't use eggs and animal fats like butter.  I know vegan gets a bad wrap but most of the vegans I know do it for health reasons and not because they are lifelong members of PETA. In fact, statistically, most people who are vegetarians in this country do it for health reasons and not because they are the fanatics many like to portray them as. But that's another blog for another day. 

Today we're talking about delicious muffins.
These delicious muffins:

Moist. Banana and chocolate deliciousness, with just a smidge of cinnamon, or as I like to call it, fall in a jar.

The muffin above has already been consumed by the 2 year old who helped make them. And test out the batter. And eat a few chocolate chunks in the process. I made her put her paci in her mouth and keep it there so she would stop eating the batter.  Another positive for it being vegan, if you have an aversion to letting your child eat dough with raw eggs. I just have an aversion to her eating all the dough and there not being any to make muffins with.

We made these yesterday but the only cupcake/muffin liners I had were fall themed and since we are giving most of what we made away, I figured it was appropriate since fall is tomorrow.

An adorable 25 pack of cupcake liners. 25. Because everyone knows 12+12=25... it does leave a little room for error if you are making a double batch and mess up 1 liner :)

So here goes: Preheat to 350 degrees, line 1 cupcake/muffin pan with 12 liners, spray them with non stick spray or oil. 





4 large bananas
1/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of unsweetened apple sauce (or 1/4 cup of oil)
1 TBS of baking soda
1 tsp of ground ginger
1 tsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of nutmeg or cloves, whichever you have on hand pumpkin pie spice works well too
1/4 tsp of salt
1 tsp of pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup of brown sugar, agave, or maple syrup
2 cups of whole wheat flour or gluten free all purpose flour
1-12 oz package of either semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks. I just get whichever is dairy free and on sale

Smash the bananas to a good chunky puree consistency. Add water, apple sauce, spices, salt, vanilla, and baking soda. Stir, and I let it get foamy, about 5 minutes of letting it sit. 
Add in sugar of choice and flour, stir until combined, it will be a little chunky.
Fold in chips/chunks.

Spoon equal amounts in each prepared cup until all batter is gone.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until tops are brown.

WAIT FOR THEM TO COOL SOME. Chocolate is like lava after it comes out of the oven. Trust me. I have the scars to prove it and Mari tried to eat some last night after I put them on the cooling wrack. Ask her how that turned out. Goober. 

I eat mine plain. My husband adds butter. Mari just eats all the chocolate out of it and asks for a banana. 

Will just sits there staring at us like this:



One day little man. One day.

Oh and this is for my Mom. Mari got some flour on her face and hair to show that she was a big helper and worked hard in the kitchen. I think there was more on the floor, but the vacuum helped take care of that.

She got a bath and braids after the muffins came out of the oven.  Love her so!