This recipe is designed to avoid the following allergens:

Wheat (Gluten)
Dairy

These are the most prominent allergens normally found in bagels. As always, read the ingredient list yourself to determine if this recipe has anything you’re allergic to.

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This recipe has had a bit of a journey. It started as an adaptation of this cornbread recipe from Nora Cooks. (I should probably still post my adaptation of that recipe; it’s not quite as exciting as muffins, but it’s still good in a pinch!) Then I decided to try using the same recipe in this cast iron mini cake pan to make something resembling corn muffins. But since the recipe (and pan) weren’t really intended for muffins, I kept tweaking the recipe and using different pans to see how close I could get.

Because I love muffins. But like so many other tasty treats, they don’t play nice with food allergies. But since corn muffins seemed to basically just be corn bread in a different tin, and the corn bread recipe worked so well, I gave it a shot.

With a few tweaks, that worked great — and I could’ve stopped there and brought you a decent corn muffin recipe, though it wouldn’t have been much different from the corn bread recipe.

At some point, though, I stumbled upon this vegan banana bread recipe from Namely Marly. It wasn’t a gluten-free recipe, but I was able to substitute GF 1-to-1 flour with great success. It was good enough to make me curious about other ways to use that batter.

Batter scooped into muffin cups, with sugar sprinkled on top

Now, you’ve hopefully already seen our pancake and waffle recipes. If you have, you’ll know that one of our favorite tricks is combining cornmeal with gluten-free flour to produce baked (ish) goods that maintain that certain level of grit that’s often lacking in gluten-free batters.

Well, somewhere in all of this, I got the notion to combine corn muffins with banana bread, since I had managed to successfully pull off Top 8 Free versions of both of those, and see what happened. The result was really something special. These weren’t just good allergy-friendly muffins; they were the best muffins I’ve ever made!

I’ve decided to call these “banana-ish” muffins because despite the use of 4 whole bananas, they don’t really have a huge amount of banana flavor. They’re used more as a textural component and binding agent. For similar reasons, I don’t call them “corn muffins” because the cornmeal doesn’t stand out. It adds a level of grit that’s often missing from gluten-free flour, but it doesn’t taste like cornbread.

I also credit The Kitchen Whisperer for helping me perfect the rise on these. Refrigerating the batter as long as possible, then starting with a brief high-heat bake, is crucial to achieving that perfect muffin top.

Muffins turned out onto cooling rack, upside-down

Yields 12 standard-sized muffins or 6 jumbo muffins.

Print Recipe

Allergy-friendly Banana-ish Muffins

Gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan muffins which use cornmeal and bananas for consistency moreso than flavor.

Prep Time30

Cook Time40

Refrigeration (minimum)1

Total Time2 10

Course: Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine: Allergy-friendly, Gluten Free, Vegan

Keyword: Allergy-friendly, banana, Cornmeal, Gluten-free, muffin, Non-Dairy, Vegan

Servings: 6 large muffins

Calories: 625kcal

Equipment

Muffin Pan – jumbo (makes 6) or regular (makes 12)

Ingredients

Dry Mix Ingredients

270 g Gluten-Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour
170 g cornmeal (fine ground recommended)
1½ Tbsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt (fine ground table salt)

Wet Mix (food processor) Ingredients

2 cups Non-dairy milk of choice
180 g Brown sugar
4 Bananas (as ripe as possible)
½ cup Vegan butter (1 stick – softened if possible)
1½ tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Tbsp Corn Starch
2 Tbsp Flax Seeds (ground)

Optional

Oil Spray (for greasing the muffin pan)
Sugar (large grain, such as Demerara or Turbinado – for topping)
½ Cup Chocolate Chips (allergy-friendly)
2 tsp Cinnamon (this may negatively impact the rise)

Instructions

BEFORE REFRIGERATION

Combine "Dry Mix" ingredients (flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon) in a medium-to-large mixing bowl.
In a food processor, combine "Wet Mix" ingredients (milk, sugar, butter, bananas, corn starch, flax seeds, vanilla)
Fold the wet mix from the food processor into the dry mix until combined.
Cover the mixing bowl and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, up to overnight

AFTER REFRIGERATION (overnight if possible)

Pre-heat oven to 500° F
Lightly oil the muffin pan (a spray works great here)
Scoop/pour batter into muffin cups as evenly as possible
OPTIONAL: Sprinkle sugar crystals on top
Bake at 500° F for about 6-10 minutes (6 minutes for smaller muffins, 10 for larger)
Without opening the oven door, reduce temperature to 400° F and continue to bake for 20 minutes (small) or 30 minutes (large).
NOTE: The 20 minutes starts immediately, not after the temperature has decreased all the way to 400. This could vary depending on how long it takes your oven to cool down.
At this point you can do the toothpick test to check for done-ness (stick a toothpick in the middle of a muffin, pull it out, and see if there's any gooey batter on it). Or, usually, you can just see if any of the tops look like they're about to burn. The tops are going to brown way before the bottoms do, so you can afford to wait for that visual cue. (This might vary depending on how much sugar you use on top, but surprisingly, the sugar doesn't usually burn. Probably because there's plenty of moisture trapped in there.)
When done, use oven mitts to take the muffin pan out of the oven, and as soon as you can, turn them out onto a cooling rack. I recommend leaving them upside down until cooled, because the tops are usually much more rigid than the bottoms, which tend to sink into the wires of the cooling rack.

Notes

Regarding the bowl size, keep in mind that you will want to be able to cover and refrigerate it.
If you don’t have a food processor, you can probably still get by with just mashing/whisking everything up really well. The main goal is to incorporate all of the vegan butter, which can be tricky, since it’s not ideal to melt it. (Honestly I’ve simply never tried it without a food processor, because it just seems like the easiest way.)
Typically a muffin recipe will say to mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients “until JUST combined”, but over-mixing probably won’t be an issue here, since there are no eggs and we are also going to let this set in the fridge for a long time.
The batter should be pretty thick and able to hold its shape a little bit, even before refrigeration. After refrigeration, you should more or less be able to stand up a spatula in it.
To fill the “cups” of the muffin pan: I would start by filling them all about halfway, then continue to distribute until the batter is used up. A pitcher is helpful for this, but not required. Ideally, the refrigerated batter will be just runny enough to be pourable, but thick enough that you can “pile” it just a wee bit higher than the cup.
Calorie count assumes a jumbo-sized muffin, but without chocolate chips or sugar. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Look, calorie-counting muffins is probably a futile endeavor in the long run, but I just want to give you a somewhat realistic baseline estimate here. If you’re trying to be healthy, you should really be eating vegetables, not these.)