Vegan “Bran” Muffins with Flax, Applesauce, and Chickpea Flour

Vegan"Bran" Muffins

I've been having fun experimenting with a new ingredient: chickpea (garbanzo bean) flour!
A blog called "Power Hungry" has a lot of good recipes using this ingredient so I decided to give chickpea flour a try.  Turns out this blogger has literally written the book on chickpea flour; you can see the book HERE.

My first version of this recipe was a flop but that was entirely my fault. I had some HUGE frozen blueberries in my freezer and I was wanting to use them up.  I put way too many of the frozen berries in the batter. When I went to take the muffins out of the pan, they fell apart and I noticed there were areas around the berries that just did not bake.  It occurred to me that I should have let many of the ingredients come to room temperature and that would have probably allowed the muffins to bake all the way through.  I used almond milk, flax meal, and chickpea flour all right out of the refrigerator and frozen blueberries; room temperature would have been better.



Here is the original recipe:
CLICK HERE

I wanted to try this recipe again but I was out of bananas.  I decided to use unsweetened applesauce in place of bananas and the muffins turned out good the 2nd time around.  I also used maple syrup in place of the molasses since I used up the last of my molasses when baking the muffins which were an under-baked flop.  These muffins really are not "bran" muffins but the ground flax meal in the batter makes the muffins taste and feel like bran muffins.

Vegan "Bran" Muffins with Flax, Applesauce, and Chickpea Flour
Adapted from "Power Hungry"

Ingredients

• 1 cup chickpea flour
• ¼ cup flaxseed meal
• 1-3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
• 4 ounces unsweetened applesauce (1/2 cup)
• ½ cup nondairy milk
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or melted coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray or grease 8 cups of a standard size muffin pan.
2. In a small bowl, whisk the chickpea flour, flaxseed meal, baking powder, cinnamon and salt until blended, being sure to break up any and all lumps in the chickpea flour.
3. In a large bowl, stir together the banana, milk, maple syrup, oil and vanilla until blended. Add the flour mixture, whisking until blended and smooth.
4. Divide batter evenly between the prepared cups.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 16 to 20 minutes until the surface of muffins appears dry and a toothpick inserted near center of muffins comes out with only moist crumbs attached.
6. Cool in pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes. Remove muffins from pan and serve warm or cool completely.