These homemade mini gluten free banana muffins are moist, tender and perfect for snacking, just like Little Bites but GF!
What makes these mini gluten free banana muffins special
I love our recipe for classic gluten free banana muffins, but it's just not the same as this recipe, even if you made that recipe in a miniature muffin tin. In that classic recipe, like in our gluten free banana bread, we use mashed bananas in the batter, which means lovely little bits of banana after baking.
We do have lots of recipes for baking gluten free with bananas. Think of cakes, quick breads, and plenty of muffins.
When I'm looking to copycat a packaged product, I always start with the manufacturer's ingredient list. Sometimes, that reveals the smartest ingredient innovations. Like the banana puree that is the very first ingredient on the Entenmann's Little Bites Banana Muffins package.
Pureeing bananas gives these mini gluten free banana muffins a seriously deep banana flavor and even takes the place of some of the fat in the recipe. And if you keep chopped bananas in your freezer at all times like I do (just take ripe bananas, peel and slice them into a large pieces, freeze in a single layer on a baking sheet and then pile into a zip-top bag when they're frozen solid), all you have to do is defrost and puree them and you can have these muffins at a moment's notice.
How to make these mini muffins as standard size
Whenever I share a recipe for something miniature, you ask if you can make the same recipe in a standard size. Of course the answer is yes, but I often have to guess at the proper baking time. Except this time, I tested them as full-sized muffins and I have some tips.
When I made this same recipe, without changing a thing, into a full-sized muffin in a standard 12-cup muffin tin, it only made 9 muffins for me, not 12. That's largely a function of the relative size of my muffin tins, but I thought it was worth mentioning since I'd prefer 12 truly full-sized muffins to 12 skimpy ones.
If your standard muffin tin has wells that are on the smaller side, you may get 12 proper muffins out of this recipe. But if you'd like to be sure, try scaling the recipe up a bit. Here, to make 12 proper muffins, I increased each ingredient like this:
- 200 grams chopped bananas
- 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon (70 g) oil
- 3 eggs (150 g, weighed out of shell)
- 2 tablespoons (42 g) molasses
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 3/4 cups (245 g) all purpose gluten free flour
- 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum (omit if your blend already contains it)
- 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon (45 g) cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3/4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar
The recipe instructions are otherwise the same, just with a different balance of ingredients. Enjoy!
Ingredients and substitutions
Since this recipe is already naturally dairy-free, there's no need to have that conversation! Here are my best ideas for how to avoid other potential allergens:
Egg-free: Since there are two eggs in this mini muffins recipe, you should be able to replace each of them with a “chia egg” (1 tablespoon ground white chia seeds + 1 tablespoon lukewarm water, mixed and allowed to gel). Add the chia eggs to the other wet ingredients, and process them as instructed for the eggs.
Cornstarch: If your all purpose gluten free flour is a high-starch blend like Cup4Cup or my mock Cup4Cup, in place of cornstarch, use an equal amount of additional all purpose gluten free flour blend, by weight. If you're using a blend like Better Batter, and you'd like to make your recipe corn-free, you can replace the cornstarch with arrowroot or even potato starch.