Chocolate peanut butter muffins

It’s Spring in the Southern Hemisphere so I’m craving ice cream and light treats. However, most of my Instagram friends are from the Northern Hemisphere so my feed is currently bombarded with hearty and warm sweet breads, soups and comfort food! To meet half way, I decided to make these chocolate and peanut butter muffins. They are wholesome and perfect heated up (perfect for Northerners) but no one can say no to the winning combo of chocolate and peanut butter (I’m looking at you Aussies and anyone in the Southern Hemisphere)!

These muffins are a simplified version of Snickers… minus the nougat but with the fluffiness of cake. I’m not complaining! These muffins are, of course, vegan but I made them refined sugar free because coconut sugar gives chocolate cake a wonderfully caramel taste.
These treats are also gluten free, as I realise many of my readers are intolerant or sensitive to it. Gluten-free baking can be tricky as the baked goods are often gritty and chewy. However, I’ve experimented with different types of flours in my cake business and came up with a good combo which involves part white rice flour and part pre-made gluten-free flour blend. The rice flour gives the muffin a light fluffiness which you can see in the picture above. The gluten-free flour blend has gums in it which helps bind all of the ingredients.

If you can eat gluten, this recipe would work well with plain wheat flour. If you only have self-raising flour on hand, halve the amount of baking powder you use in your batter. At the end of the day, nothing can replace the texture of normal gluten flour… in my opinion at least! The first ingredient in the recipe is coconut sugar so it may initially sound like that there’s a lot of sugar in the muffins. However, when you add up all of the flours, cocoa powder and other ingredients, the muffins aren’t overly sweet at all! Feel free to adjust the amount of sugar in the recipe – the less you put, the more fudgy and dense the muffins will be. Just remember to taste test your batter before you bake them. Unlike conventional muffin batters which have eggs, there are only plant-based ingredients in this recipe so there is minimal risk of getting salmonella or sick from taste testing it!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy making this recipe!

If you try this recipe, I would love to hear about it! Comment below and rate it as it would really help us and other readers! If you post it on social media, tag @rainbownourishments and #rainbownourishments.

Print Recipe

Prep Time15 mins

Cook Time30 mins

Total Time45 mins

Servings: 12

Ingredients

Dry ingredients

• 1 1/2 (250g) coconut sugar
• 1 cup (155g) white rice flour
• 1/2 cup (85g) gluten-free flour blend
• 1/2 cup (40g) cocoa or raw cacao powder
• 2 tsp (10g) baking powder

Wet ingredients

• 1 cup (250mL) almond milk
• 1/2 cup (125mL) water
• 1/2 cup (125mL) light-tasting vegetable oil, such as sunflower or rapeseed

Peanut butter swirl

• 1/2 cup (180g) smooth or crunchy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup (50mL) plant-based milk, such as almond, soy or coconut
• 1 tbs (10g) coconut sugar

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 160C.
• Sift all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
• Add the wet ingredients to the bowl and mix until combined.
• In a separate bowl, combine all of the peanut butter swirl ingredients until thoroughly combined. Add half of the mixture into the muffin batter and fold in but don't completely mix in.
• Scoop and distribute the muffin batter into 12 lined muffin moulds. Spoon remaining peanut butter mixture on top of muffins. Use a blunt knife to roughly swirl the peanut butter into the top of the muffins.
• Bake muffins in the oven for 25-28 minutes or until a skewer can be inserted into a muffin and it comes out clean.
• Rest muffins for 5 minutes and enjoy! Muffins can be kept at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Alternatively, freeze the muffins in an airtight container for up to a month.