Vegan Mofo Iron Half-Chef

Have you been following the official VeganMoFo blog?  You should.  The MoFo team is doing daily round-ups, give-aways, and, every weekend, an Iron Chef challenge.  This week’s ingredients are Banana and Coffee.

I tapped my finger to my noggin’ a few times trying to think of a unique way to combine these ingredients, but alas.  Fortunately, there are a bunch of people MoFo’ing who didn’t draw a blank!  Some of my favorites from the reader are:

• Kelly from V for Vegan’s Chocolate Chip Coffee Banana Ice Cream
• Bread Without Butter’s inspired savory contribution, Smoky Black Bean Chili with Sweet Banana Chutney
• And, Think.Care.Act.’s Banana Panna Cotta Tiramisu Fairy Cake with Tiramisu Semifreddo and Caramel Sauce

There are so many more wonderful contributions, and I’m excited to see the official list up on VeganMoFo.com.

If I was going to contribute a recipe it probably would have been a variation of my Chocolate Banana Bread Muffins.  Coffee seems like a natural addition to this recipe.  It’s often used to add richness to chocolate baked goods.  However, I didn’t do that because so many other MoFo’ers already had a similar idea, and I’m not highly motivated to add unnecessary caffeine to my baked goods (the java don’t jive with my nursing baby, just sayin’).

Even though I didn’t add any coffee, I am going add to the banana bread inundation on your MoFo reader and post my muffin recipe.  Because, excuse the brag, people effin’ love these muffins.  Seriously.

Chocolate Banana Bread Muffins

NOTE: This is really a heavily modified Betty Crocker recipe so a little more experimentation and tweaking never hurts.  Things I often tinker with: the amounts and kinds of sweetener, the kind of flour, and the add-ins.  Most recently I omitted the white sugar, used coconut oil instead of EB, and did half White WW Flour.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 C soymilk + 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar (this is the buttermilk mix, combine at start so it’s ready when you need to add it)

1/2 C earth balance (or coconut oil… really whatever fat you want)
1/2 C sugar
1/4 C maple syrup or agave nectar
1 1/2 cup mashed, ripe banana (about 3 medium)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 C flour
1/4 C cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, cream together the earth balance and sugar. Add in the bananas, soymilk/acv mixture and vanilla. Stir until well combined and smooth.

2. Stir in the dry ingredients. Don’t overmix.

3. Fold in any additions you see fit (nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit, etc). No more than 1 cup, probably.

4. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes.

5.  Eat ‘em up.