These sugar-free vegan banana muffins are soft, moist mini muffins perfect as a first vegan baby recipe from 6 months. They are easy to eat with small hands and are allergy-friendly: egg-free, dairy-free, and refined sugar-free.
I love baking super-simple vegan recipes that are also healthy and delicious. I believe that you can have treats that are both nutritious and conscious.
I have made many healthy vegan muffins, like my 3-Ingredient Banana Muffins, Oatmeal Vegan Muffins, or Vegan Gluten-Free Muffins.
What Are Sugar-Free Banana Muffins?
Sugar-free Banana Muffins are healthy banana muffins, also known as baby-led weaning banana muffins, perfect to offer as a baby’s first food from 6 months of age.
They are perfect for mums who want to start baby-led weaning, a baby feeding technique that consists of offering real food to babies instead of baby puree.
Baby muffins are sugar-free, which means they don’t contain added sugar, and they are made with wholesome, nutritious ingredients, safe for babies from 6 months of age.
Ingredients
All you need are 5 simple ingredients:
- Flour – whole wheat flour or all-purpose flour. Both options work great. Whole wheat flour contains more fiber and makes the muffin a little denser, but it is a nutritious flour for babies. If your little one has some food allergies, you can adapt this recipe to make it gluten-free by replacing whole wheat flour with all-purpose gluten-free flour and add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice to the recipe to help the muffin raise more.
- Melted coconut oil or vegetable oil you have at home, like light olive oil or canola oil.
- Milk of choice – you can use breastmilk for babies from 6 months old or non-dairy milk like almond milk, coconut milk, or oat milk.
- Ripe bananas – these are sugar-free banana muffins only sweetened with mashed bananas. It means that the ripest the banana is, the sweetest the muffins will be!
- Baking powder – essential to give them a little rise.
Flavoring Options
For toddlers from 12 months of age, you can add the following:
- 1/3 cup of chocolate chips
- 1/4 cup of coconut sugar
- 1/2 cup of dried raisins
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/3 cup of finely chopped walnuts
- Replace the plant-based milk with the same amount of a liquid sweetener, such as maple syrup.
You can also use this baby banana muffin recipe to create a range of baby-led weaning muffins.
Stir in the batter some of the ingredients below to introduce new food to your baby.
- 1/3 cup of finely grated carrots.
- 1/3 cup of finely grated and squeezed zucchini.
- 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast to add a cheese flavor.
How To Make Sugar-Free Banana Muffins
These baby-led weaning banana muffins are super easy to whip up in 15 minutes.
- First, peel and mash the bananas in a large bowl.
- Then, add all the remaining wet ingredients: coconut oil and almond milk.
- Now, stir in baking powder and flour until it forms a smooth muffin batter. It’s ok if there are bits of bananas in your banana baby muffins. The bits will be very soft after baking and soft for the baby to swallow.
- Grease two 12-hole mini muffin pans with coconut oil. Then, fill each hole up to 3/4 of its volume.
- Bake the batter in a preheated oven at 350°F (180°C) on the center rack until a pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. It takes 15 to 18 minutes.
Remove the muffin tins from the oven and cool the baby-led weaning banana muffins on a cooling rack for 30 minutes or until they reach room temperature before offering them to your kids.
Frequently Asked Questions
For babies under 12 months, it’s not recommended to introduce added sweeteners. So a better option to add flavor will be to add instead 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup blueberries. Baby banana blueberry muffins taste amazing, and it’s a great option to introduce new fruits to baby
This is a healthy muffin recipe as they contain only natural ingredients and brings all basics nutrient needed for babies or toddlers, including:
– Fiber and vitamins from banana and flour.
– Calcium from milk – I used fortified almond milk or soy milk.
– No refined sugar – naturally sweetened with bananas.
These baby banana muffins taste like banana bread. They are soft, moist, and lightly sweet, with a delicious banana flavor. Of course, they are sugar-free.
As a result, they might taste bland to adults, but they are the perfect simple finger food for babies to introduce bite-sized food and nutritious ingredients.
These baby-friendly banana muffins must be stored in an airtight container to keep them moist.
They last for up to 2 days at room temperature, up to 5 days in the fridge.
You can keep the muffins in an airtight container for up to 3 months in the freezer. They are convenient muffins to meal prep baby breakfast or baby snacks. Thaw the muffins at room temperature at least 3 hours before or overnight, at room temperature.
More Vegan Kid Recipes
If you like vegan kid-friendly recipes, you’ll love these:
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Sugar-Free Vegan Banana Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 cup Mashed Banana - about 3 medium ripe bananas
- ¼ cup Melted Coconut Oil
- ¼ cup Almond Milk - or non-dairy milk you love
- 1 cup All-Purpose Flour - or white whole wheat flour. Ready my guide to measuring flour.
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease two 12-hole mini muffin trays with coconut oil. Set aside.
- Peel, mash the bananas, and measure 1 cup of mashed bananas.
- In a large bowl, combine mashed banana, melted coconut oil, and almond milk.
- Stir in baking powder and flour until it forms a muffin batter.
- Fill each muffin hole up to 3/4 of their level.
- Bake for 20 minutes or until golden outside and a skewer inserted in the center of the muffins comes out clean.
- Cool down on a cooling rack before eating.
- Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days or freeze and thaw a few hours before eating.
I went a little off the beaten path and subbed some of the flour for unsweetened protein powder, and used olive oil for the coconut oil.. Really good! My dad is prediabetic and he and I loved them. Definitely sweet enough 🙂
Nice tweaks!! Glad you liked the muffins!!
Thank you for this recipe! So
simple and delicious! I have made for my granddaughter and her parents love them too! Added zucchini, carrots, blueberries and cinnamon in various batches. I highly recommend.
How much cinnamon did you add? A couple teaspoons?
Is there anyway to incorporate oats/oameal? Thanks!
Yes, you certainly can add some oats to the recipe, or just follow my Banana Oatmeal Muffin recipe and leave the sugar out.
Could you use almond flour? If so would something else change like how much you use or add something else like when you mention lemon juice for the other flour.
I am sorry but no, it won’t hold together because almond flour has no starch and often required eggs in cakes or muffins.
Would this work with brown rice flour?
I am not too sure, I never bake with this flour so I can’t recommend.
Do you have the measurements available in metric? I always struggle to convert! Thank you
Hi Hayley, I’ve updated the measurements to include metrics!
Thank you so much. Love these x
I made these with white wheat and added walnuts. I didn’t have any trouble getting them to bake all the way through and they turned out moist. I would definitely make them again, but next time I would add vanilla extract and cinnamon.
Hi, what can i use in replacement for coconut oil? I have avocado oil, olive oil, vegetable oil…
Any vegetable oil or melted vegan butter works.
Hi there, would this work with homo milk?
Probably, I never tried homo milk before sorry!
So quick and easy, and great results! I used soy milk instead of almond, and half whole/ half white flour. They’re nice and fluffy and don’t taste sugar free! (I did use very ripe bananas so nice and sweet.)
If adding blueberries, would you just mix them in whole at the end?