These zucchini banana buckwheat muffins are soft and fluffy with a lovely banana flavor. They're great as a side to breakfast or packed in lunches, as these muffins are nut free and only sweetened with bananas (no added sugar). In addition, these buckwheat muffins are gluten free, dairy free and paleo friendly.
Buckwheat flour can be tricky to work with, as it has a strong flavor and often produces dry baked goods, but these zucchini banana buckwheat muffins are amazing!
They are soft and fluffy with a nutty banana flavor. We love mixing in some chopped chocolate chips, but you can absolutely go without!
This banana buckwheat muffin recipe is gluten free, dairy free and refined sugar free. In fact, these muffins are only sweetened with bananas, making them a great option for breakfast or a healthy snack.
Why You'll Love these Buckwheat Muffins
- gluten free - made without wheat flour and perfect for those adhering to a gluten free diet.
- dairy free - no butter or milk in this recipe
- nut free - perfect for school lunches and anyone with nut allergies
- paleo friendly - made with simple, minimally processed ingredients
- easy to make - just blend batter in a food processor or high powered blender, pour into a lined muffin tin and bake!
Ingredients
Here's a list of the ingredients you need to make these healthy buckwheat muffins:
- zucchini - 1 medium sized zucchini, cut into ½ inch slices
- ripe bananas - yellow with many brown/black speckles
- eggs - an egg substitute has not been tested, but if you try one then let me know the results in the comment section below.
- vanilla extract - for flavor.
- buckwheat flour - I love Anthony's organic buckwheat flour
- tapioca starch - for texture purposes. You may swap the tapioca for coconut flour. With coconut flour, you'll get more dense muffins, while using tapioca will make the muffins lighter and more airy.
- baking powder - for fluffy muffins
- baking soda - for fluffy muffins
- salt - to enhance the flavors
- dark chocolate chips - optional
How To Make Buckwheat Muffins in a Food Processor
These zucchini banana buckwheat muffins can be made in a food processor or high powered blender. The reason for blending the ingredients is to get a silky smooth batter and hide the zucchini (as my kids prefer).
Here are the steps:
- First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with paper or silicone muffin liners and set aside.
- Blend zucchini and banana.
- Add in remaining ingredients (except chocolate chips) and blend until smooth.
- Pulse in chocolate chips.
- Scoop batter into lined muffin tin, filling each slot nearly to the top. You can add extra chopped chocolate on top if you want.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 17-19 minutes. (I like them slightly underbaked, so just 17 minutes.)
- After baking, remove them from the oven and let them cool a few minutes in the muffin tin before transferring them to a wire cooling rack.
Tip: For best results, I recommend measuring all muffin ingredients by weight (when given). This will result in the most accurate measurements, ensuring success. I like to use a small kitchen scale for all of my baking.
Storage
These buckwheat muffins should be kept in a sealed, airtight container. You can store them at room temperature for a couple days, or in the fridge for up to one week. They can also be frozen and then reheated in the microwave.
FAQ
While some people don't consider buckwheat to be paleo, I do since it's gluten free and grain free. It's a seed that is collected from a flowering plant, closely related to rhubarb.
Some people with severe digestive issues cannot tolerate buckwheat, whereas some have no problems with it. So, listen to your body and do what's best for you 🙂
The name “buckwheat” actually comes from a Dutch word that means beech wheat. This is in reference to the fruit of the buckwheat that resembles a small beech nut.
Buckwheat is not related to wheat. But instead, it's a fruit that is closely related to rhubarb. The fruit is dried and ground into a flour.
This hearty flour has an earthy, nutty taste and ranges from reddish-pink in color to dark brown. Buckwheat is quite nutrient dense as far as baking flours go. It contains fairly high amounts of manganese, copper, magnesium, dietary fiber and phosphorus. In addition, the protein in buckwheat is a high quality protein, containing all eight essential amino acids, including lysine.
You can replace the 3 tablespoons of tapioca starch with 2 tablespoons of coconut flour. This will slightly change the texture of the muffins, but not have much of an effect on the flavor.
Since these muffins are only sweetened with bananas they are not overly sweet. You can add a couple tablespoons of maple syrup, honey or coconut sugar if you wish.
More Recipes Using Buckwheat Flour
Zucchini Banana Buckwheat Muffins
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 17 minutes
- Total Time: 27 minutes
- Yield: 1 dozen muffins 1x
Description
These healthy zucchini banana buckwheat muffins are made with buckwheat flour and sweetened with bananas. They're light and fluffy with a nutty banana flavor.
Ingredients
- 125g zucchini (abut 1 cup ½" slices)
- 250g banana (about 2 cups ½" slices)
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup buckwheat flour (150g) spooned & leveled
- 3 Tbsp tapioca starch (21g)*
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp salt
- ⅓ cup dark chocolate chips (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin pan with paper or silicone liners and set aside.
- Place zucchini and banana in a food processor or high powered blender and blend until smooth.
- Add in remaining ingredients (except chocolate chips) and blend until batter is well mixed.
- Pulse chocolate chips into the batter.
- Pour batter into your lined muffin pan.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 17-19 minutes**
- Remove muffins from oven, cool in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire cooling rack.
Notes
For best results, measure ingredients by weight (when given)
*or 2 Tbsp coconut flour
**I like these muffins slightly underbaked, so closer to 17 minutes.
Milly
Hi thanks for the recipe. They taste ok for a sugar free muffin but I think they would taste better a little sweeter. Maybe I'll use very ripe almost black bananas next time. Also it was very hard to pulse in the food processor. Took over 10 minutes so I finished it off in the Vitamix. Prep time was more like half an hour to line with cupcake liners, weigh ingredients, blend them all together. And was hard to blend in slices especially if putting the dry ingredients first.
Katie
I'm sorry to hear that. These muffins aren't supposed to be super sweet - adding a little honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar is always an option. Perhaps your food processor isn't powerful enough. The batter worked well in the one I own and was quick to make.
Jiyoon KIM
It was very easy to make, but tastes great!
I used tapioca flour instead of coconut flour, it was moist, airy soft and tast of banana with buckwheat was good combination.
Since I love buckwheat flavor, this will my go to recipe.
Katie
Thank you so much for sharing and leaving a review! I'm glad you like the recipe 🙂
Katie
My family loves these low sugar buckwheat muffins. We eat them for breakfast and as an afternoon snack or packed in lunches.
Jill
These were really good. I made them with tapioca flour instead of coconut. I liked that they weren't extra sweet.
Pamela
I loved this easy, tasty recipe that is made of real food ingredients. I also like that you can adjust the sweetness to your taste based on how ripe your bananas are. Will make these again!
Katie
I'm so glad you like them! Thank you for leaving a review 🙂
Caitlin
These muffins are amazingly good! No, they don't taste like your favorite bakery muffins, but for someone whose been off processed sugar for years now, they almost taste it to me! I love that you get the added veggie, and they have a hint of sweetness from the bananas. I used GF flour instead of coconut flour and it had a wonderful fluffy and soft texture. I also love adding in collagen powder for some added protein. I've made them 3 times now and plan to make them for a lady's tea at church for us "special diet" gals.
Katie
I'm so glad you've had success making them with gluten free flour and added collagen 🙂 Thank you for leaving a detailed review!!
Rema
Fantastic! I made this recipe for my friend with celiac disease. Both she and I enjoyed these muffins.
My tweaks -- I used 1 flax egg + 1 egg (instead of 2 eggs), 2 tbsp cornstarch (instead of coconut flour), blended in 3 dates with the wet stuff (for sweetness), and added 1 tsp cinnamon and 15 chopped Turkish figs. Also, I baked these for 27 min.
Katie
I'm so glad all of your tweaks turned out - the muffins sound amazing!
Jean
Yum! Exactly what I was looking for. I also added a few dates too just for fun. I didn't have tapioca or coconut flour so I used a gluten free flour blend instead of the tapioca flour. It worked great.
Katie
I'm so glad the gluten free blend worked for you!
Sandee
What can be used instead of bananas?
Would applesauce work?
Katie
Applesauce should work.