Vegan Date Muffins - MEWS free!

My wonderful sister in law sent me the inspiration for these muffins, and since I am stuck in waiting for a washing machine engineer who cannot tell the time I decided to get backing.

I'm a bit of a novice baking egg free still, and I suspect my efforts are nothing like as good as hers, but this is her adapted recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow's "It's All Good" Recipe Book. 

Ingredients

• 2 cups Gluten free flour of your choice
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• a pinch of sea salt
• 2 overripe bananas (great raising agent!)
• 1/2 cup virgin olive oil
• 2/3 cup maple syrup
• 2/3 cup almond milk or your choice of substitute
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup pitted dates or dried fruit of your choice
• walnuts/seeds/your choice or nothing to sprinkle on the surface before baking

Variation - You could combine a mixture of flours, and also replace a scoop with protein powder. My sister splits the 2 cups of flour into four quarter cups of brown rice flour, millet, quinoa, and buckwheat.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180C 400F
• Combine all dry ingredients in bowl 1
• Combine all other wet ingredients in bowl 2.
• Thoroughly combine the contents of both bowls and spoon into (about 16) papercases.

Tip - toss the dried fruit in a spoonful of flour first, this prevents them sinking to the bottom of the muffins when cooking.

My efforts were good, but didn't rise quite as well. I suspect my mixture was a little dry - it needs to be a soft, dropping consistency. These are delicious though, and I can think of plenty of variations! Great for packed lunches too!