How Pinteresting…Vegan Flourless Chocolate Muffins

Pinterest claimed another one of my hunger pangs and forced me to make these vegan flourless chocolate muffins last weekend. I’m a little on the fence about them. While they were shared over 7K times online and pinned and repinned who knows how many more, I’m not totally convinced these muffins, while healthier than most, are worth the cals they pack (315 per muffin – omg). The texture is unique, more dense than breadlike (obviously, no flour) they do have a gooey brownie-like quality that makes them have a velvety mouth feel.

I do think these would be a great food to have pre-workout or on a marathon route somewhere in the middle to end as they contain many lovely natural sugars for energy, potassium from the bananas for your tired muscles,  and probably some health benefit from the cocoa (maybe caffeine or additional stimulant). They are dense, filling, and easy on the stomach. This is a pretty low-investment experiment. I had all of these items lying around my house, so give them a try for yourself. They take a matter of a few minutes to whip up in your food processor and just a few minutes in the oven. I added a generous pinch of salt after I tasted the batter as the recipe was a little bland as written. Report back what you think, I’d be curious to know.

Ingredient

• 1 cup creamy peanut butter (or nut butter of choice)
• 2 very ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• Generous pinch of sea salt

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Pre-heat oven to 350.
In a food processor combine all ingredients. You may have to stop and scrape down the sides a few times.
Once everything is mixed well, spoon batter into lined muffin cups. If using papers you might want to lightly spray the bottoms to avoid sticking. The batter will be VERY sticky. I found wetting a spoon kept it from sticking.
I topped a few of mine with a pinch of sea salt.
Place muffin pan in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes.
Wait until these are completely cooled before removing from the pan. When the timer goes off they will not look cooked, trust the recipe and pull them so you don’t try them out.  My recipe made 8.