Vegan Vox: Vegan Recipe of the Week - Banana Nut Muffins with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Last week I had a few bananas over ripe in my fruit bowl and wondered what to do with them, I decided to try my hand at vegan muffins. As the bananas act as a binding agent in this recipe, there is no need for eggs (yay!) as in traditional muffin recipes and you only need a little fat, so these are low fat healthy muffins, you can reduce the sugar if you like but I like sweetness, and the frosting is optional but super tasty :-)

Here is the recipe:

For the Muffins you will need:

3 over ripe bananas, mashed

55g vegan butter

200g brown sugar

250g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

100g walnuts or almonds

For the frosting you will need:

115g vegan butter

170g icing sugar

60g cocoa powder

1tsp vanilla extract

Dried banana pieces, walnuts or almonds for decoration

14 muffin cases

Makes 14 muffins

Method:

Pre heat the oven to 180C (160C Fan Oven)

In a mixing bowl cream together the mashed bananas, vegan butter and sugar with an electric whisk or mixer.

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour and bicarb together and add the salt. Put the nuts into a food processor until finely chopped and add to the flour mixture. Stir together.

Next, add the dry ingredients mixture slowly to the banana mixture and continue to mix or blend until combined.

Place your muffin cases into a deep muffin tray and fill each case 3/4 full of the batter.

Bake on the middle shelf for 25 minutes.

Once baked, take out of the oven and leave for 5 minutes in the muffin trays. Then transfer the muffins in their cases to a cooling rack until completely cool.

Once cool, it's time to prepare the frosting.

In a mixing bowl sieve together the icing sugar and cocoa powder. Add the vegan butter and vanilla extract. Place a clean tea towel over the mixing bowl and then mix together with an electric hand whisk or mixer. This will stop the fine powder coating everything in your kitchen! Once the frosting is combined to a nice consistency spoon it into a piping bag with a star nozzle.

Pipe the buttercream onto the muffins as a small star in the centre (heathier) or a large swirl all over the muffin (yummier) and top with a dried banana piece or nut for decoration.