These Banana Quinoa Muffins are fluffy banana muffins made from raw quinoa, blended with oats for a healthy vegan, gluten-free muffin in the morning. These quinoa muffins are also easy to make in less than 30 minutes for a quick weekly breakfast.
You know my passion for quinoa recipes, especially adding quinoa into breakfast and desserts like in my quinoa brownies or quinoa breakfast bake. It’s a great alternative to my protein donuts and overnight oats with protein powder if you want protein but don’t want to use protein powder.
Why You Need To Bake With Quinoa
The reason I love quinoa so much is not really because it’s of its taste. However, I think quinoa has a slightly earthy flavor that takes some time to appreciate. It’s very much an acquired taste. But, I love quinoa for its nutritional profile.
Getting all your essential amino acids on a vegan diet can be challenging without supplements. And that’s why you should add quinoa to your plate. Quinoa is what we call a complete vegan protein source. It contains all the amino acids you need on a vegan diet.
So if you are like me and are not a big fan of quinoa, try adding it to sweet recipes! You will get all its benefits without even noticing you are eating quinoa.
Ingredients and Substitutions
- Raw Quinoa – You can use any color of quinoa. I use white quinoa because it makes lovely golden brown muffins that kids will eat without asking me what’s in there.
- Quick Oats – You can use old-fashioned oats or quick oats, but the former makes the batter a little drier.
- Almond Milk – Or any plant-based milk you love like oat milk, hemp milk, or soy milk.
- Vanilla Extract – To add a delicious flavor.
- Baking Powder and Baking Soda – for some rise.
- Melted Coconut Oil – Coconut oil is my preferred option, but you can also use canola oil or melted vegan butter.
- Unrefined Cane Sugar – or coconut sugar.
- Cinnamon – for taste.
- Ripe Bananas or yellow bananas – peel the banana and weigh before making the muffins, so you are sure the batter will be the right consistency.
Add-Ons
You can stir some delicious ingredients into the batter before pouring it into the pan.
Add in half a cup of the below for a nice crunch:
- Dark Chocolate Chips
- Chopped Walnuts or Chopped Pecans
- Dried Raisins
How To Make Banana Quinoa Muffins
This quinoa banana muffin recipe is a blender muffin recipe like my peanut butter banana oatmeal muffins.
All you need is to bring everything in a blender to make them—no need for ten bowls or utensils.
- First, place the raw quinoa in a sieve and rinse under cold tap water to remove any impurities. You don’t need to soak the quinoa for this recipe. You can improve its digestibility, but it’s optional.
- To soak quinoa, place the quinoa in a bowl, cover with cold water, place a lid on top and set aside at room temperature for up to 3 hours.
- Then, peel bananas and weigh them. All bananas are different. There are small, medium, and large bananas. When it comes to egg-free muffin recipes using special flour like quinoa as a flour replacement, it’s better to measure the banana precisely. This ensures that the batter is not overloaded with bananas, too thin, or missing bananas, resulting in dry muffins.
- Drain the quinoa well, then add in the jug of your high-speed blender along with bananas, quick oats, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla extract, almond milk, cinnamon, melted coconut oil, and unrefined cane sugar.
- Blend it on high-speed- speed 10 of a Vitamix pro- for 40 seconds.
- Like any blended muffin recipe, it’s great to rest the batter for 5 minutes in the jug before filling the muffin pan. However, if you pour the batter too quickly into the pan, the muffins will form a hole in their center in the oven because the batter has been over-mixed at high speed.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a 12-muffin pan with a paper liner, and spray all paper liners using oil spray.
- This quinoa muffin recipe makes 16 muffins, so you have two options: Use two 12-hole pans and bake both pans at the same time. It’s okay to bake a pan with only four muffins on it! Use one pan, set aside the remaining batter at room temperature, and bake later in the same cooled muffin pan.
- Pour the batter up to 3/4 level of each muffin hole.
- Bake the muffins in the center rack of the oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean – about 30 minutes.
- The muffins are ready when raised and have a nice golden brown color.
- Cool down immediately on a wire rack, don’t leave it in the pan to avoid the muffins getting packed or dense.
Allergy Swaps
Below are some swaps you can apply to this recipe based on your food allergies
- Gluten-Free – Quinoa is naturally gluten-free; pick a gluten-free certified quick oat brand and gluten-free baking powder.
- Sugar-Free – You can swap unrefined cane sugar for sugar-free allulose or erythritol.
- Nut-Free – Use hemp milk, soy milk or coconut milk, or oat milk as a swap for almond milk.
Storage Instructions
You can store the Quinoa Muffins in the fridge for up to 4 days in a sealed box. It’s also possible to freeze them in zip-lock bags and thaw them the day before at room temperature.
Frequently Asked Questions
These taste like banana bread, a nice fluffy crumb with delicious banana flavor and a little earthy flavor from quinoa that you will guess it’s there but won’t bother even if you are not a quinoa fan.
Blended muffins can be packed or dense if you don’t rest the batter, over blend the batter – more than 40 seconds. This happens if you use a blender that is not powerful enough to grind quinoa, and therefore you over-process the batter. Finally, this can also occur if you add too many bananas, so weigh the banana at the beginning, as recommended.
No, a food processor blade is not strong enough to pulse quinoa into flour.
Yes, you can use the same amount of quinoa flour to swap raw quinoa.
This recipe won’t bake very well in a loaf pan. It’s a recipe for 16 muffins, and therefore it will take more than 75 minutes to bake in a loaf pan with some risk that the center stays uncooked.
You can probably try vegan yogurt, but the muffins will be very dense without coconut oil, so I don’t recommend this option.
More Quinoa Recipes
Below are more quinoa recipes for you to try:
More Banana Muffin Recipes
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Banana Quinoa Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 ⅓ cup Quinoa - uncooked, rinsed
- 3 medium Banana - 270g/9.5 oz peeled banana
- 1 ½ cup Quick Oats
- ½ cup Cane Sugar
- 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
- 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- ¼ cup Melted Coconut Oil
- 2 cups Almond Milk
Instructions
- You need a high-speed blender for this recipe, or the quinoa won't blend into flour.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line a 12-hole muffin pan with paper liner cases and lightly spray oil in the cases. Set it aside.
- Peel and weigh the amount of peeled banana required by the recipe for precision and to avoid dry or overly moist muffins.
- In a sieve, rinse the raw quinoa under cold water.
- In a blender, add raw, rinsed, drained quinoa, quick oats, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, bananas, salt, vanilla extract, almond milk, and melted coconut oil.
- Blend on the high-speed setting – speed 10 of a Vitamix Pro – for 40 seconds or until the batter is smooth with no pieces of quinoa.
- Rest the batter for 5 minutes in the blender before filling the muffin paper liners.
- Fill each muffin up to 3/4 their level. The recipe makes 16 muffins, so I used two 12-muffin pans. You can set aside the remaining batter and cook it after the first batch is cooked.
- Bake the muffins on the center rack for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center come out clean.
- Cool down on the wire rack for 30-40 minutes before serving.
Storage
- Store in the fridge for up to 4 days in a sealed box. Or freeze them in zip-lock bags and thaw the day before at room temperature.
can you replace sugar with maple syrup?
I don’t think it’d work, the batter might be too wet with maple syrup.
Don’t have a Vitamix blender. What are other options here?
Unfortunately you need a blender.
I am sugar free, do you think using apple puree would be a suitable replacement for the sugar?
Unfortunately no, applesauce will make the muffins ultra dense and packed. But you can replace sugar by erythritol or allulose they firm up muffins and add natural sweeteness.
I just made these.Halved the recipe to try a small batch first.They turned out exactly as in ur pics and are delicious.Great option for a cheat day bite.
Can you use regular oats instead of quick oats in this recipe?
Yes, but they come out a bit more dry