Eggless Banana Muffins

Here in India, Muffins are often known by name Cupcakes, not many people distinguishing between the two. I love Cakes and Muffins/Cupcakes we get at the bakeries here in Bangalore but wanted to try them out at home for a long time now. Few days back, I bought Muffin trays and paper cups and other baking supplies from a store here. To prepare Eggless Banana Muffins, I followed instructions posted by Nitya in her cooking blog and wanted to come up with Muffins that look as yummy as those captured by Nitya beautifully.

It’s always a challenge for the less experienced to come up with great tasting cakes, breads that contain no eggs and are baked in Microwave instead of OTG. Fortunately for everyone of us and thanks to Nitya, the Eggless Banana Muffins came out really well – soft, fluffy and delicious. And some did not believe that it was eggless and the softness or fluffiness was achieved with the help of ripe Bananas, Baking Powder and Soda. I am so glad that things are working out very well for me and people at home are having a good time with what comes out of my baking experiments.

Eggless Banana Muffins

I tried Eggless Banana Muffins with just two bigger sized, nicely ripe Morris Bananas. The Muffins require a total of 20-25 min of actual baking in an oven. All I did was to prepare Cake batter, pour them into Muffin cups and bake them in convection mode of a preheated Microwave Oven. During baking, the top of the Muffins will slowly raise/expand by about 30% (contributing to the softness of the cake), starts to lightly “break” after about 15 min of baking and then turns golden brown in color almost towards the end of total 20 min baking in my Samsung Microwave Convection Oven. I baked an extra 2 min to obtain that nice crusty layer on the top of the Eggless Banana Muffin.

Below I will try to explain how to make Eggless Banana Muffins or Cupcakes in conventional OTG as well as in Microwave Convection Mode. If you happen to try this out, I hope you will have as much fun as I did giving shape to these little ones you see in the image below

Eggless Banana Muffins

Time to Prepare: 1 hr 15 min

How to Make Eggless Banana Muffins:

1. Mix All Purpose flour or Maida, Baking Soda, Baking Powder. Sieve the mixed ingredients thrice before starting the beating process (described in Step 4 below). This helps the ingredients to mix well and also removes the air in the flour.
2. Mash the ripe Bananas well with hand. I do not prefer to puree the Banana in a mixer grinder or a blender. I also powdered the Sugar before starting beating process, since powdered Sugar helps to mix the Butter and Sugar fast.
3. In a bowl, mix Butter and Sugar and beat well with the help of beater or with whisk. Add the mashed Banana, Vanilla Essence and a pinch of Salt to the this Butter-Sugar mix and beat once to blend and mix well.
4.  Divide the sieved ingredients (from step 1) into 3 proportions. Add these sieved ingredients to the bowl slowly, bit by bit while you keep beating the batter. If the batter is found thick, add the Milk to batter in increments, slowly (not all at once) when beating. The batter must be of pouring consistency just like the regular Idly or Dosa batter.
5. Add a few chopped Cashews to the batter and mix once. Do not use up the Cashews completely; hold a few Cashew bits to be used as toppings to be placed on top of Muffins as described in the next step.
6. Preheat the oven for 190ºC for 10 minutes. Line the Muffins tray with Muffin Cups(I used Aluminum Tray). Fill the Muffin Cups with Banana Muffin batter to about 3/4th of its size and top it with chopped Cashews.
7. Bake the Eggless Banana Muffins for 20 min in oven by setting the temperature at 190ºC. When baked, the Muffins will expand to fill the cup. Allow to cool completely on wire rack before serving.

Now delicious, fluffy and soft Eggless Banana Muffins are ready for savoring. The measurements mentioned above makes about 14 Banana Muffins.

Eggless Banana Muffins

I usually bake the Cakes or Muffins in Microwave Convection Mode.

Here is the way how to bake the Muffins in Microwave Convection Mode. I have Samsung Convection Microwave of 30 liter Capacity. For good or bad, I do not own an OTG, and I am always looking to prepare cakes and cookies in my Microwave. My Eggless Chocolate Cake and Eggless Vanilla Cake were also baked in Microwave Convection mode. As you can see from the comments posted there, there is a lot of interest from the readers to know how they can leverage Microwave for baking.

Eggless Banana Muffins

Baking Process in Microwave Convection Mode :

1. Follow the above process till step 6. In step 6, keep the high rack grill for preheating. In my microwave, there is a pre-heat option. I usually use the pre-heat button to set the pre-heat temperature to 200 degree centigrade before pressing start button. Pre-heating takes exactly 10 min. If there is no separate pre-heat option provided, then just set the microwave temperature to 200 degrees and allow the oven to pre-heat in convection mode to about 10 minutes.
2. Once pre-heated, place the Muffin Tray filled with Muffin cups on the high rack grill and bake the Eggless Banana Muffins for 20-25 minutes by setting 180ºC temperature or till done. To know if the Muffins are completed baked, insert a tooth pick into one of the baked Muffins, pull it out and check if there is nothing sticking to it. It took me about 22 min to bake the Banana Muffins and I just slightly kept it a little longer until I obtained light golden brown color on the top of the Banana Muffins. I did the whole baking in 3 batches with each batch baking max of 6 Eggless Banana Muffins.
3. Once done, remove the Banana Muffins from the tray and allow it to cool on the rack. When it is cooled completely store the Eggless Banana Muffins in an air tight container.

Enjoy the privilege of relishing home-made Banana Muffins. I kept them for 3 days in a Tupperware container and all the Banana Muffins were quite fresh for the entire duration. So enjoy by preparing the Eggless Banana Muffins at home.

Eggless Banana Muffins

Note:

1. One can choose any type of Bananas. If using small Bananas like Yellaki Banana, use 4 of them or else use 2 fully ripened big sized Green or Morris yellow Bananas.
2. Apart of Cashews mentioned above, nothing stops you from using more Dry fruits like Pistachios, Walnuts, Almonds. It’s all your choice when it comes making Muffins at home.
3. If the Muffin batter turns out thick, add Milk to dilute a little. Nitya mentions in her post that water can be used too for thinning the batter.
4. I once spoiled Banana Bread Loaf using low rack. Always use high rack for the baking Muffins in Microwave Convection mode.

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