Chocolate Mud Muffins
This recipe includes a number of ingredients that help to feed the good guys in your microbiome – namely cashews, black beans, banana flour, raw cacao, walnuts and dark chocolate. See the tips below for a more detailed description of the gut benefits.
Although they’re a sweet snack, I would far prefer my family to be enjoying these than just about any other treat I can imagine.
Ingredients
150 g cashews (dry roasted or activated)
100 g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa), broken into pieces (dairy-free if needed)
400 g canned black beans, drained and rinsed
50 g banana flour
80 g banana, broken into pieces
2 tbsp raw cacao powder
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla bean extract
120 g virgin olive oil or coconut oil (see Tips)
80 g milk of choice (dairy-free if needed)
60 g honey
1 tsp baking powder (ensure gluten-free if needed)
50 g walnuts (optional)
Method
- Preheat oven to 160°C. Line a 12-hole muffin tray with cupcake liners and set aside.
- Gently melt chocolate (either in a heavy-based saucepan over stovetop or in a microwave-proof bowl in microwave), stirring occasionally, until just melted and smooth.
- Place cashews into a food processor or high powered blender and process until finely ground. Add reserved melted chocolate, black beans, banana flour, banana, cacao, eggs, vanilla, oil, milk and honey and process about 2 minutes until mixture is well combined and smooth.
- Add baking powder and walnuts (optional) and process until just combined (I like the walnuts to still have some crunch). Leave mixture to stand for 3 minutes, then transfer into prepared muffin tin.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until just cooked. Set aside to cool before serving.
Tips
- Australian gut health expert Dr Jason Hawrelak is a keen advocate of eating black beans to support gut health. He has remarked: “With black beans we’ve got the black polyphenols, we’ve got a range of soluble and insoluble fibres, we’ve got resistant starches and we have oligosaccharides, all in one package. You can’t find anything else that’s got four or five different ways of feeding the microbiome like you get with a legume like that.”
- Banana flour has become a popular gut-friendly ingredient due to its high resistant starch content. Resistant starch is a prebiotic that promotes gut health by feeding the good bacteria that live in our microbiome.
- Dark chocolate is a source of proanthocyanidin – a special kind of prebiotic that certain beneficial gut bacteria like to feed on. Generally speaking, the higher the cacao content, the higher the proanthocyanidin content. So choose the highest percentage that your tastebuds can handle (because the higher you go, there will be less sweetness and more bitterness).
- Raw cacao is similar to regular cocoa – both come from the cocoa bean – except it’s less processed and hasn’t been heated to high temperatures, so it retains more nutrients, including vitamin C, iron, fibre, polyphenols and other antioxidants. However, if you don’t have any on hand, you can use regular cocoa powder instead. Like dark chocolate, cacao is also a source of the prebiotic proanthocyanidin.
- You can substitute in your preferred unrefined oil if you prefer, such as macadamia oil.
Variation
Thermomix method
- Preheat oven to 160°C. Line a 12-hole muffin tray with cupcake liners and set aside.
- Place cashews into mixing bowl and mill 6 sec/speed 8. Transfer into a bowl and set aside.
- Place chocolate into mixing bowl and chop 5 sec/speed 7. Scrape down sides of mixing bowl and melt 3 min/50°C/speed 1.
- Add beans, banana flour, banana, cacao, eggs, vanilla, oil, milk, honey and reserved cashews and mix 2 min/speed 4. Scrape down sides of mixing bowl and blend 30 sec/speed 7.
- Add baking powder and walnuts (optional) and blend for 30 sec/speed 4. Leave mixture to stand for 3 minutes, then transfer mixture into prepared muffin tin. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until just cooked. Set aside to cool before serving.
