Vegan Peanut Butter and Banana Breakfast Muffins (Gluten Free and Refined Sugar Free Options)

Moist, fluffy, and rich with creamy peanut butter and sweet banana flavor, these Vegan Peanut Butter and Banana Breakfast Muffins will quickly become your new go-to morning treat!

Peanut butter is low key the best breakfast ingredient.  Don’t you dare disagree with me!  It’s got protein, it tastes great on its own, or with bananas, or on toast.  Making peanut butter treats fills my kitchen with one of the best baked good smells there is.

So really, can you imagine anything better for breakfast than a big, moist, dome topped muffin filled with peanut butter AND banana??  Add chocolate chips or nuts or raisins if you want.  Top with some melted peanut butter or banana slices.  Or do all of this at once and live the breakfast dream!!

How To Make Them

Start off by making your flax eggs.  Haven’t done this before?  It’s so easy!  Just measure out 2 tbsp of ground flaxseed, mix with 5 tbsp of water, and let it sit for 5-10 minutes until it turns to a gel-like consistency. 

While the flax eggs are setting, mash up 3 bananas.  Don’t worry too much about how this measures out, the recipe is forgiving.  Mix the peanut butter, maple syrup, neutral oil, apple cider vinegar, flax eggs, and vanilla extract together with the mashed banana until combined.  There will be some texture left from the banana, that’s fine and delicious!  Next up mix in the granulated sugar (see the Ingredients Needed section to learn how to make these lower in sugar!).  Then add in the dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon, and mix again until combined.  If you want to add chips or nuts or any other mix-ins, do that now as well.

(The photos below are mashed banana, then all the wet ingredients right before the sugar is mixed in, then all of the ingredients completely mixed before being spooned into the muffin tin)

Note that in the Ingredients section below, I go into more depth about some of these specific ingredients, and what substitutions can and cannot be made.

Once the batter is ready, spoon it into a muffin tin lined with cupcake liners, each one will fill pretty close to the top.  Put in the oven at 375 degrees for 18-22 minutes, and when they’re out let them cool in the pan for about 5-10 minutes before moving to a cooling rack.

And that’s it! Eat and enjoy your vegan peanut butter & banana breakfast muffins!! Nutritional info can be found in the Notes section below the recipe instructions.

Storage:

Here’s the thing about muffins, especially vegan and gluten free ones – they lose their quality pretty quickly. If you are eating them all immediately, for which I do NOT judge you, then they will be fantastic. But if you want to enjoy them for more than a day or two, I’d recommend letting them cool, then within the day wrapping them in something air tight and freezing them. Saran wrap or a tupperware or a Ziploc bag. This way when the craving for vegan peanut butter & banana breakfast muffins hits, you just defrost one and it’s as good as new!

Pro tips and tools:

• Make sure you are measuring your flour either by weight or using the spoon and level method.  Do not scoop directly from the container, as you will wind up with too much! This is so important! If you want to buy a pre-made gluten free flour blend, make sure it’s King Arthur’s Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour, it is BY FAR the best one for my recipes, NOT Bob’s Red Mills or any others. If you want to make a homemade blend, here is a link to the one I use.
• Make sure you measure your liquid ingredients using liquid measuring cups.  This will ensure accuracy!  I love this set.
• Missing any of the basics? Here is my go-to muffin tin, and my go-to cupcake liners.

Ingredients needed:

• Ground flaxseed + water – this is for flax eggs.  If you don’t have ground flaxseed on hand, the muffins can work without the eggs, but they will be more dense rather than fluffy.
• Bananas – 3 bananas work perfectly here, don’t worry about specific measurements, the recipe is forgiving.
• Smooth peanut butter – important note here!! – in all of my peanut butter based recipes I use Skippy since I find it’s the most accessible for people to get at their local markets.  If you are using a neutral peanut butter, you may need to adjust the moisture a bit.  Make sure to check the photos to stay close to the consistency I used.
• Neutral oil – any will work here, I tend to use grapeseed.  If you want the muffins to be oil free you can skip this step, but just this little bit of oil goes a long way in keeping the muffins moist.  I haven’t tried swapping out with applesauce, but I bet that would work well.
• Maple syrup
• Apple cider vinegar – this can be substituted for lemon juice or white vinegar.  This will not impact the flavor at all, it just helps interact with the baking soda to give the muffin that beautiful high rise top.
• Vanilla extract
• Granulated sugar – I use ¼ cup here, which is 4 tbsps, but if you prefer a sweeter muffin I’d suggest using 6 tbsp.  If you want to make these refined sugar free, I love using this Monkfruit Sweetener in place of granulated sugar.
• Flour – Make sure you are measuring your flour either by weight or using the spoon and level method.  Do not scoop directly from the container, as you will wind up with too much! This is so important! If you want to buy a pre-made gluten free flour blend, make sure it’s King Arthur’s Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour, it is BY FAR the best one for my recipes, NOT Bob’s Red Mills or any others. If you want to make a homemade blend, here is a link to the one I use.
• Baking powder – I recommend using baking powder that has no added aluminum. This one is my go-to.
• Baking soda
• Salt
• Cinnamon
• Optional mix-ins – chocolate chips, nuts, raisins, peanut butter chips, etc.

What To Bake Next:

• Want more bananas for breakfast? Try this Vegan Marbled Banana Bread, or these Vegan Banana Pancakes.
• Want these ingredients in cookie form? Try these Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies, or these Vegan Banana Bread Cookies.
• Want more breakfast muffins? Try these Vegan Blueberry Muffins, or these Vegan Lemon Poppyseed Muffins, or these Healthy Flourless & Refined Sugar Free Chocolate Chip Mini-Muffins.