We all know and love a yummy breakfast muffin, sweet & fluffy, and studded with fruits or little bits of chocolate. They're a sneaky way to eat cake for breakfast, which is probably why they're so popular! But what if you're more of a savoury-in-the-morning kind of person but want a little treat? These Easy Vegan Savoury Spinach Muffins are just the thing (and have the advantage of being sugar free, so are ever so slightly better for you!)
Many many years ago, I worked across the road from the first Ottolenghi cafe in Notting Hill. Among other things, they had a savoury muffin that would appear occasionally in their tempting window as part of their pastry repertoire. When it was available, I would almost always be tempted to have one along with my morning coffee. It's been years since I've been back there, (I live on the other side of London now) but I've been meaning to recreate them for the longest time.
Fortunately this recipe has very successfully recreated the Savoury Spinach muffin of my memories, and not only that, it's turned out to be very easy to make vegan. Yay! This recipe makes 12, which makes them perfect to take along for a breakfast morning, or you could do as I did, and make yourself popular & take them along to work!
This recipe specifies frozen spinach, which I think is infinitely easier to use for a quick muffin recipe like this, as all you need to do is thaw it & drain off any excess water. However if you choose, you could use fresh spinach, in which case you'll need to cook down around 500g (Half a kilo) of fresh spinach to get roughly the 165g of frozen spinach equivalent.
Of course, you don't need to save these Easy Vegan Savoury Spinach Muffins just for breakfast, they make a great afternoon snack, or would be delicious made mini, and served as a canape! (And if you're ever needing a super easy sweet muffin recipe, that's versatile, check out this one!)
Easy Vegan Savoury Spinach Muffins
Ingredients
- 90 ml sunflower oil
- 2 teaspoon ground linseed (mixed with 2-3 teaspoon water)
- 375 g self-raising flour
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)
- ⅓ teaspoon salt
- 60 g nutritional yeast
- 165 g frozen spinach (or use 500g fresh & cook down)
- 420 ml plant milk
- 6 cherry tomatoes (to decorate)
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 190⁰C and put muffin cases in 12 piece muffin tin.
- In one bowl, place the oil, linseed & plant milk & mix to combine.
- In another bowl, mix together the nutritional yeast, flour, baking powder, chilli powder & salt
- Thaw the spinach & squeeze to remove excess moisture , chop it up a bit so the pieces are able to be mixed in easily (or if using fresh spinach, gently steam, squeeze out & chop)
- Slowly add the liquid mix to the dry mix, stirring bit by bit until it's all combined. Don't over mix.
- Add the spinach to the mix & stir to combine.
- Spoon the mixture into each muffin case and top with half a cherry tomato & some seeds
- Bake for 25 minutes. By this time the tops should be a golden brown. Put a skewer in one of them and make sure it comes out clean. They may need an extra 5 minutes.
- Once cooked, take the muffins out the tin and put on a cooling rack.
Sarah Morgan says
Recipe looks great but wanted to say I noticed a typo on the amount of flour....unless these muffins feed an army, aha!
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
Ha! Thanks Sarah! Will fix it asap 🙂
Sally says
Super tasty muffins! Definitely needed some salt added (for my taste anyway!) Would be great with some spring onion sprinkled on top and maybe some vegan cheese mixed in too. Thank you for a tasty recipe!!
Louise-Claire Cayzer says
Spring onion on top sounds like a great idea!! And vegan cheese too 🙂 The great thing about these muffins is you can get a little creative with them. So pleased you liked them.