Week 12 Dish 2: Vegan banana walnut muffins

As I mentioned before, I started experimenting with vegan dishes because my dad recently decided to become vegan. He actually make this choice early this year, but I was so busy with 5th year and looming exams (nightmare!) I never really baked anything vegan until July after my exams were finally over. What really inspired me to begin were 3 extremely overripe bananas; usually used to make banana bread but the recipe was not vegan. So I thought, it can't be that hard to find a vegan recipe can it? And it wasn't hard at all! I found so many, chose the simplest one with ingredients that most people would have, and voila! Vegan banana bread! Soon this became a standard treat I would bake if the bananas became too mushy (and thanks to the gorgeous summer we've had, this has been pretty common). I've since experimented with bars and cookies, but nothing beats a moist muffin! So here is the recipe, which can be made as a bread, muffins or cake.

Makes 12 muffins/ one bread loaf/ one 8 inch cake
Ingredients
225 g plain flour
3 heaped tsp baking powder
100 g brown sugar (I've been reducing this to 75 g)
3 tsp ground cinnamon or mixed spice or a combination of the two (I've been using 5 tsp and would recommend it to anyone who loves cinnamon)
3 large mushy bananas, mashed
75 g vegetable or sunflower oil (weight)
50 g walnuts (or other nuts or dried fruits)
Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and get the muffin cases ready.
2. Add the mashed bananas, sugar and oil to a large mixing bowl and mix well.
3. Add the sieved flour, baking powder and cinnamon/ mixed spice and mix until combined.
4. Stir in the nuts/ dried fruit and spoon into the muffin cases.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean.
6. To make as a bread, bake in a greased and lined loaf tin at 180°C for 20 minutes, then check. If the loaf is browning, cover with foil and bake for another 40 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean. Remove from the tin after cooling for 10-15 minutes. Allow to cool completely before slicing.
7. To make as a cake, bake in a greased 8 inch cake tin at 180°C for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick come out clean. Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes before removing from the to and cooling completely on a wire rack.

Original recipe: Vegan banana bread
Like I said, a very simple recipe with scrumptious results! Because vegan muffins are usually made with oil, they are often more moist and soft than their non-vegan counterparts - try them and see for yourself!!