Spinach Banana Blender Muffins | Gluten Free & Whole Grain
Gluten Free Spinach Banana Blender Muffins – Easy Vegetarian Meal Prep Recipe!
What better way to get your veggies in than with green, whole grain, gluten free muffins?! You can blend an ENTIRE 6-ounce bag of spinach into this banana blender muffins batter, and you won’t even taste it.
Oat flour keeps these muffins gluten-free, and mashed banana adds natural sweetness and a gooey, creamy texture. Enjoy as a wholesome snack, or as an on-the-go breakfast! A great vegetarian meal prep recipe that’s sure to become a regular part of your week!
Stud Muffins
When I want a sweet that isn’t necessarily dessert, muffins come to mind. But, I also don’t want to miss out on other important nutrients in my day. So, how to sneak some extra nutrition into these banana blender muffins?
SPINACH. If you’ve ever added spinach to a smoothie, you know that you don’t even taste it! But, it’s an easy way to pack loads of wholesome leafy green nutrients into a recipe.
And, since spinach makes everything green, it adds a fun color twist to these banana blender muffins! Often, I’m not tempted by green food. After all, it’s usually a leaf of some sort…. But a green muffin? That, I can get on board with!
And, I always love when I can get vibrant colors from whole foods into baked goods naturally—no dye needed!
Keep it Basic with your Blender!
Blender muffins are one of my greatest discoveries of all time. Literally, you just blend all of the ingredients, distribute into the muffin tins, and bake! That means less work, less fuss, less that can go wrong, and less dishes! Win-win-win-win.
Personally, I use a high-powered blender to make sure everything integrates well. I mean, you don’t want to have any spinach leaf fragments floating around in the baked muffin… Especially if you’re trying to sneak more greens into a picky eaters’ diet. So, just blend until super smooth, keep it our little secret, and let them enjoy!
Maximizing Sweetness in your Banana Blender Muffins
ALWAYS, in any baking recipe let your bananas turn spotty brown! THIS is when they are primed for baking. And, specifically, for these spinach banana blender muffins.
Those brown spots are a sign that the starches have converted to sugars, making them the perfect fat and sugar replacements in a baked good. So, if you’ve got bananas on the way out, get out your blender! Ultimately, the ripeness of your bananas will determine the sweetness of your batter. And, I recommend adding sweetener to taste.
You can use regular sugar, or any granulated sweetener—calories or not. But, I wouldn’t recommend substituting a liquid sweetener here. Baked goods tend to be sweeter before they’re baked, so remember when tasting your batter for sweetness that it will become LESS sweet once baked.
Keep this in mind and add a tad extra sweetener once your batter tastes good to you. That way, you’ll end up with perfectly sweet spinach banana blender muffins!
Spinach Banana Blender Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup mashed banana, about 3 ripe bananas
- 1 bag, 6 oz spinach
- ½ cup sugar/sweetener of choice
- 1 egg
- ⅓ cup butter or coconut oil, melted
- 1½ cup oat flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Blend banana, spinach, sugar, egg, and melted butter (or coconut oil).
- Add dry ingredients to blender.
- Spoon into mini muffin tins
- Bake 10-12 minutes.
- Allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container or zip-top bag with as much air removed as possible. Safe to store in pantry/on countertop at room temperature, or store in the fridge for maximum freshness.
- Yields 30 mini spinach banana blander muffins.
10 Comments on “Spinach Banana Blender Muffins | Gluten Free & Whole Grain”
Made these this morning with my toddler. They’re a hit! My blender isn’t super powerful so it took a little work getting everything together. I didn’t have oat flour on hand so I used 3/4C almond flour and 3/4C Bob”s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 blend. They’re pretty sweet imo so I think I’d put a little less sugar next time.
Hi Naya, thank you so much for trying out this muffin recipe! We really appreciate hearing how your substitutions worked out – this is helpful for us to know, as well as others who’d like to give similar changes a try. We’re so glad the muffins turned out well and you’re toddler enjoyed them 🙂
Thankfully the muffins are delicious.
I’m not sure what kind of supersonic blender you have but I was unable (twice) to make these in the blender. I have an zoster multi-function blender and was using the mix and then smoothie function on low and high speeds to no avail. The first attempt didn’t make it to the oven and ended up in the garbage because the spinach wouldn’t blend in. The second time I wilted the spinach first and was going great but then the flour wouldn’t blend in. I poured the contents into a bowl and mixed the old fashioned way and crossed my fingers. They’ve just come out and are good. Phew. Next time I will only blend the wet ingredients (and will wilt the spinach first), then mix in a bowl. Thanks for the recipe though.
Thanks so much for trying out the recipe! Glad you enjoyed, although sorry to hear that the batter proved a bit tricky for your blender. We use a NutriBullet and/or a Vitamix, depending on the recipe. I don’t know much about the Zoster blender, but it does sound like it may be a power issue!
If you try this recipe again, we recommend starting with the spinach near the blade at the bottom, along with the wet ingredients (banana, sweetener, egg, butter). Blend that all together until smooth, then add in your oat flour & dry ingredients. I hope this can be helpful! 🙂
How should we store these? in the fridge? in a cabinet?
These are safe to store in the cabinet at room temperature, as long as they’re in an airtight container. (Reusable storage container, mason jars, zip-top bag, etc.) I prefer to store them in the fridge for maximum freshness, but it’s not necessary!
Mine seem to be darker and undercooked in the middle, any suggestions?
The darker color is likely just because of a difference in the ingredients! The type of spinach leaves & how fresh they are, as well as how ripe/browned your mashed banana was, etc.
In terms of being undercooked in the middle, I’d recommend allowing them to bake for a bit longer than 10-12 minutes. Bake times/temperatures can vary somewhat, depending on different ovens/locations – but I’d just check the doneness of your muffins with a toothpick to see when it comes out clean, and then keep that bake time in mind for next time! Hope this helps 🙂
Could I use coconut flour instead of oat flour in this recipe??
We haven’t personally tried this recipe with coconut flour, so cant say for certain how it would turn out! In general, coconut flour is far more dense than oat flour, so it can be tricky to substitute – especially in baked goods.
You could experiment a bit with the recipe by substituting the oat flour with coconut flour, but use less coconut flour than the recipe calls for – maybe 3/4 cup coconut flour? I’d also recommend adding an extra egg and maybe increasing the amount of liquid! But like I said, this is just me doing some guesswork I can’t be sure that these adjustments would result in successful muffins – it’ll require some trial and error to see what works! 🙂