These high protein muffins make a great packed lunch or breakfast on the go. Chickpea flour and veges are a nutritious combo that'll fill you up and keep your motor running.
For children across New Zealand today is the first day back at school after term holidays. Like most parents I'm already dreading the daily grind of packing school lunches. My school-aged offspring would happily live on peanut butter sandwiches forever, and at times she does! But at the beginning of term I'm always determined to think of something new and ensure she gets a bit of variety. Sandwiches every day must get pretty old, pretty fast, and I struggle to come up with interesting sandwich fillings that are acceptable to a six year old.
These muffins are made with everyday ingredients for the most part. Chickpea flour kicks the protein up a notch and gives the muffins a moist and almost quiche-like texture.
I've included eggs because my family does eat them, but they're totally optional and the recipe works equally well without them. The eggless version doesn't rise quite as much, but in a side by side taste test it's almost impossible to tell the difference. In the picture below, egg muffins are on the left, eggless muffins on the right.
Chop and change the vegetables to suit you or your kidlets' preferences. Just make sure whatever you use totals about 2 cups of finely chopped or grated veges. Frozen corn would work well.
I suspect this recipe could be made gluten free by using all chickpea flour, instead of half and half chickpea and white. The muffins will probably be a little heavier but the recipe should still work. I haven't tested this theory so let me know if you give it a go.
I've kept these dairy free, but go ahead and add half a cup of grated cheese if you want to. I added 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast for a little savoury 'cheesiness' and the B12. If you don't use nutritional yeast then I'd suggest including 1 teaspoon of vegetable stock powder instead.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup chickpea flour
- 1 cup white flour
- 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast or 1 teaspoon vegetable stock powder optional
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 onion finely chopped
- 1 carrot grated
- 125 grams frozen spinach thawed and excess liquid squeezed out (approximate - I used 3 lumps of freeflow frozen chopped spinach)
- Fresh or sundried tomato Sliced, to top each muffin (optional)
- 2 eggs optional
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 cups water
INSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat oven to 210°C fanbake.
- Grease and line the bottoms of a 12 hole muffin pan.
- Put all of the dry ingredients and vegetables into a mixing bowl. Stir to combine.
- Mix eggs, olive oil and water, then add to the mixing bowl. Stir everything well to combine. The mixture will be quite thin - don't worry, it's all good.
- Use a quarter cup sized measuring spoon to drop portions of batter into each muffin hole - this is an easy way to get it right the first time and make sure you end up with equal sized muffins.
- Top with fresh or sundried tomato.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer comes out pretty clean.
