Vegan Spinach Muffins
These vegan spinach muffins are as yummy as they are healthy! Made from whole grains, naturally sweetened and veggie-loaded, they are mixed entirely in your blender and are dairy-free and egg free! The perfect healthy breakfast or snack for your family.
“Here lies Taesha. She was a loving wife, mother, friend, daughter, and sister. She taught many children, loved hiking, feared snakes, couldn’t sing to save her life and brought the world Green Smoothie Muffins.”
This is what I imagine my tombstone will one day read. All of the great things that have defined me in life, and yes, green smoothie muffins makes the list.
Did you make these muffins and now you have leftover spinach? Check out How to Store Spinach (and keep it fresh all week long).
If you are new around these parts, you probably have no idea what the heck I am talking about. But for you longtime TNNers, you know how popular and magical my Oatmeal Green Smoothie muffins are. Not a day goes by that I don’t get a handful of pictures in my email or DMs on Instagram of adorable kiddos shoving green smoothie muffins into their cute little faces. Or notes from parents and caregivers sharing how the Oatmeal Green Smoothie Muffins have changed how their children feel about green veggies, or that it is the only veggie-packed recipe they can get their selective eater to enjoy, or that it is their go-to easy breakfast that is both healthy and beloved by the family. Yep, Green Smoothie muffins are awesome and loved by many.
However, I also get a handful of emails from parents that are working with children with food allergies who can’t do eggs or dairy. Or their family is vegan by choice for various reasons. Or that they have a texture sensitive kiddo that finds the oat flour in the Green Smoothie muffins a bit too dense. So, I have created a twin sister to the Green Smoothie muffins with those particular people in mind. TNNers, say hello to Kid-Friendly Vegan Spinach Muffins.
All the flavor and easy you all love in my Green Smoothie muffins, but made from white whole wheat flour (for a lighter texture) and free of eggs and dairy! And just because it’s fun, I threw some mini chocolate chips into the mix! Because chocolate makes everything more exciting…but especially new green foods!
Suggested Adapations
- Make them gluten free. Sub the whole wheat flour with your favorite 1:1 gluten free flour blend! I like Bob’s Red Mills blend.
- Egg-free not important? If you don’t need these muffins to be vegan, replace the water and flax meal in this recipe with 2 large eggs.
- Dairy-free not important? Again, this these muffins look like something you need in your life but them being vegan isn’t important to your crew, use whatever milk your family enjoys or has on hand!
- Skip the chocolate chips. And enjoy these as is!
- Replace chocolate chips with raisins, blueberries or chopped nuts. Or whatever else you can dream up!
- Bake it as a loaf! Bake it at the same temperature for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Tips for making vegan spinach muffins
- If you don’t have a high-speed blender that can handle a heavy load, consider blending JUST the wet ingredients + spinach in the blender (everything mentioned in Step 3 of the directions). Once blended, combine the blended wet ingredients + the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and mix until the batter has an even consistency. Fold in chocolate chips and bake as normal.
- If you are making it for extra littles ones, skip the maple syrup/date syrup, salt and chocolate chips! The banana sweetens these nicely on their own.
- Start slow with the spinach for veggie-iffy kiddos. If your child (or partner) hasn’t hopped on the green food train yet, try adding just one very small handful of spinach for the first batch. The muffins will be lighter in their green color and less intimidating. When you make another batch, add a little bit more if your family seems open to it.
How to make these vegan spinach muffins with kids
Involve children in the baking! This recipe is simple and a great one to bake with kiddos….especially since it involves add vegetables. And lots of research shows that children who are involved in the cooking process are drastically more likely to be open to trying new foods! Since there is no eggs, you can relax about the kiddos licking their fingers during the cooking process.
- Have your child add the spinach to the blender. Let them decide how much too! Even if it is just one leaf of spinach, your child will know that there is a veggie in the muffins.
- Let them mash the bananas.
- Have him/her sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the muffins before popping them into the oven.
Other veggie-packed muffin recipes kiddos love!
- Egg-free Carrot Apple Muffins
- Vegan Carrot Muffins (with lentils)
- Dairy-free Sweet Potato Peanut Butter Muffins
- Dairy-free Chocolate Butternut Squash Muffins
Did you try this veggie-loaded muffin recipe and now you’re hungry for more?
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Vegan Spinach Muffins
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp ground flax meal
- 5 tbsp water
- 1 cup mashed banana
- 1-2 cups loosely packed baby spinach, depending on how green you want them. Don't go crazy though…too much spinach will add extra moisture and the muffins might be mushy in the middle
- 1/4 cup oil, I use melted coconut oil or avocado
- 1/4 cup maple syrup or date syrup, Sub honey* if vegan is not needed
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup white whole wheat flour, can sub 1:1 gluten free flour mix, if needed
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp salt
- chocolate chips**, to taste and optional
Equipment
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 ℉ and line a 12-hole muffin tin with liners. Set aside
- Combine flax meal and water in a small bowl and let it sit for about 5 minutes to let it "gel". This will form a "flax egg" and work as a binding agent in the muffins.
- After the "flax egg" has has a chance to gel, add it to a blender along with the maple syrup/ date syrup, banana, spinach, oil, vinegar, and vanilla.
- Blend until mixture is smooth.
- Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon and process until just mixed.
- Finally, fold in chocolate chips (if using).
- Portion batter into prepared muffin tin and top with extra chocolate chips if desired.
- Bake for 20-22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
- Let cool in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Enjoy and let cool completely and store leftovers in an air-tight container in fridge or freezer.
Just made these and my family keeps stealing them off the cooking rack! Really soft and great flavor! I loved your original recipe but this is great for a switch up depending on what I have on hand!
These are delicious!! I usually make your green oatmeal blender muffins but these are nice to mix it up a little! They were easy to make with my kiddos help (ages 3 and 6) and were fluffy and tasty! We made these and the green smoothie today for St. Patty’s Day
Yikes! Tried to give these a five star rating but somehow it marked four!
LOL I can’t tell you how many times I have done that on other sites!
Yay! I am glad it was a hit! So fun and so many veggies!
These muffins are SO so so good! I’ve made them a few times already switching up applesauce and bananas and also eggs and flax eggs. They are literally foolproof and turn out great no matter what! I love your spinach blender muffins but these are truly next level! Thank you so much for all your amazing recipes!
Yes! I love a forgiving recipe that you can make with whatever you have on hand! So glad you are loving them@
I followed the recipe exactly and these didn’t work for me at all. I had to bake for an extra 5 mins and they were still soggy inside and deflated as soon as they started to cool. Did the coconut oil need to be melted beforehand? They tasted so good, despite being mushy — we just scraped them out of the muffin liners and ate the mash. I want to try these again but am wondering what I did wrong?!
Hi Brittany! Sorry to hear they didn’t work. Let’s see if we can do some trouble shooting. I know I have had some readers try to put extra spinach in and that adds too much moisture to the muffins and they stay mushy. And yes, the coconut oil should be melted to help it evenly distribute into the muffin. I went back and realized I had left that part out of the recipe and will for sure update it!
Thanks so much for your reply! I should’ve known to melt the coconut oil. I tried them again tonight but they still deflated and are mushy inside. I used 1.5 loose cups of spinach. My toddler is OBSESSED with them regardless so will experiment with my oven settings next time and see if I can get them to cook through properly. 🙂 Look forward to trying more of your recipes!
I’m so glad they still taste good! So interesting that they are still mush. I’d love to help you figure this out. I think you might be on the right track with the oven. I know I had to get a thermometer to keep inside my oven since it is old and it started not cooking at the right temperature. It helps me know how hot is actually is vs what the failing sensor tells me.
Love this recipe!!! I have been trying to incorporate different veggies in my sons diet as he typical sticks to his staples of carrots, bell peppers, cucumber and green beans. He gave me two thumbs up and even asked for more! THANK YOU!! I also used this recipe and added brewers yeast to increase my milk supply as I am a nursing mama and it worked great!
This warms my heart so much! I am SO glad it was a success and I love the idea of turning them into “nursing muffins” with the addition of the brewers yeast!
Big hit! We used silan as the sweetener, and canola oil for the fat. My kids dont usually like spinach, and were begging for more
Such a win! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Taesha,
The same thing is happening to me! I put them to cook in a pan and it has been over an hour, but remains mushy. I tasted the mush and it was delicious!
Well I am glad they taste good but the mush factor is a bummer! Any changes to the recipe? One thought is people sometimes get excited about the spinach and add more, which adds too much moisture to the recipe and can result in mush.
Hi, this sounds great! I have plenty of silver wet in my garden, could I substitute this for the baby spinach at all please?
Thankyou
Hmmmm….I’m not familiar with silver wet and am not sure how the flavor might be different than spinach.
Is it possible to omit the coconut oil? Or what can I replace it with to make it oil free?
Thanks
I find that unsweetened applesauce is a great oil sub in baked goods. They might stick to paper liners without oil, so maybe use silicone muffin liners if you have them!
I used warned natural peanut butter (ie not dry and clumpy) in place of oil and it worked well. Another runny nut butter or tahini would also work.
What a great idea! I will have to try that in the next batch!
I can’t remember if I have commented here before, but this is honestly my GO TO recipe of yours! I love that they are green and fun and my girls love them (and their friends who have been over to eat them too)
These are yummy! I subbed whole wheat pastry flour for the www (just want I had), warmed peanut butter for the oil and frozen wild blueberries in place of chocolate chips. Delicious!
So glad you enjoyed, Jamie!!
My 3 year old LOVES the oatmeal green smoothie muffins, but my 10 month old is allergic to oats, eggs and dairy, so we tried these instead. Both kiddos devoured them and asked for more. Thank you for having variations that work for different dietary needs! We made them mini muffin sized and they were perfect after 10 minutes.
I am so glad these were a success! Thank you for taking the time to leave a review!
Hmmm… I did exactly as the recipe stated and it totally deflated when I took them out and was mush inside.
The batter seemed particularly runny… what should it be before heading into the liners?
Hi Rebecca! Sorry to hear about the muffins being a bust. You can see what the batter show look like from the pictures in the post. Did you add extra spinach by chance? I ask because the times I have had other readers have a similar issue with these muffins is because they tried to add extra spinach and resulted in the muffins being too wet! Or did you use APF? That flour is not as “thirsty” as white whole wheat flour and won’t have as thick of a batter.
We LOVE these muffins, making a fresh batch now and planning to make some for saint patricks day and may even try them with an avocado chocolate frosting. lol.
I was curious, have you tried freezing the batter or the muffins? I am thinking of making them ahead of time and wondering how they might turn out.
I freeze the baked muffins often! They freeze and defrost beautifully.
So, I’m new here and have been doing a lot of searching not only for myself and just wanting to exclude many ingredients from my foods but also my 4 year old son. He is allergic to egg and also has many other sensitivities such as dairy, gluten etc. So upon finding this recipe online I was like no way. I tried them, first time was a failure but I’m not a big baker. I just knew though they could be good. Tried them again, they were even better and third time I got them just right and I just want to say me and my family have made these muffins 6 times now in the past 2 weeks because we are so in love. It might take a few times to get it just right but it is so worth it. They are yummy!! We did the recipe exactly how is says above & amazing! Cant wait to try more of these recipes, I think me and my family are going to enjoy them. They meet most of our needs and are a healthier option. Can not beat that, this week we are trying the apple carrot muffins. Cant wait. Thank you for the awesome recipes and the fact you can sub ingredients if needed. A+ on this recipe!
First off, welcome Harley! Second, your comment warmed my heart. Helping families find veggie-loaded recipe that work for them AND that they enjoy is my purpose with every recipe. So hearing that this recipe was exactly that for you brings me a lot of joy. Thanks for taking the time to share that and I hope you love the apple carrot muffins as much as we do!
Hello,
So I have been kind of experimenting with this recipe, because at first I didnt even see it was a 1:1 GF flour, I thought it was just regular GF flour so I just used the bobs red mill gluten free and still seemed to taste good and bake fine. So I was wondering if its still okay to use that or should I use the 1:1 to be safe? After I seen this I did end up using the one suggested but it just felt as if the muffins were just not fluffing up but were more mushy. They would cook and the tops were fluff up but as soon as you remove them from the oven the tops would fall back in. Please let me know about these things or have any suggestions. Thank you
Hi Harley! In my experience, the 1:1 is the best but I am glad to hear that regular GF worked great! Stick with it if you enjoyed the results! As for the falling muffins….It sounds like either you muffins need longer to bake or have too much moisture in them.
Ovens (especially ovens a couple years old or older) need to be recalibrated and don’t always cook at the proper temp. I have learned to keep an internal thermometer in my oven to make sure things are baking at the temp I want and the oven claims! So, that might be the issue. Just bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the muffin comes out clean and not gooey. Also, let the muffins sit for a bit before opening them up and they will firm up as they cool.
Also, be sure not to add more spinach than directed. I mention this in the recipe and again because I have had well-meaning readers do this. They add a lot more spinach to this recipe in hopes of getting more greens into their kids (which, I mean, I totally get!), but end up with mushy muffins because of the moisture from the extra spinach. Perhaps try less spinach next batch and see if that helps!
The ingredients don’t list milk. How much do you use?
You are right! I just retested and updated the recipe to remove the almond milk but forgot to take it out of the instructions. Thanks for catching that and I have updated it.
Hello,
I LOVE these muffins…like too much..haha. I am pretty sure I have made these before with egg instead of flax egg, and I can’t remember what that substitution is and not seeing it listed. Do you mind sharing? I initially found these and made them with flax egg because my daughter has an egg allergy, but she now tolerates and is supposed to eat egg in baked goods and these are our favorite treat! I just haven’t had a minute to make them lately, maybe the substitution was removed when the recipe was updated? Any help appreciated, thanks!
Hi Katie! I am so glad you enjoy these so much! The sub is in the blog post under the Suggested Adaption section but you can replace the flax and water with 2 eggs!
Thank you SO MUCH Taesha!! 🙂
Made them this morning. Delicious!
I am so glad you enjoyed them!
Can I sub oatmeal flour in this? We’re trying to get as much wheat out of our diet as possible. TIA!
This recipe is very similar and uses oatmeal! You can sub the eggs with flax eggs and use almond or oat milk.
https://thenaturalnurturer.com/oatmeal-green-smoothie-muffins/
Thank you very much for this amazing recipe. Our family is vegan so these work out wonderfully for us. I just made these and they were delicious. I wonder if you can substitute the spinach with other vegetables such as broccoli or kale. Thank you
I’ms so glad you enjoyed them, Karine! Kale has worked for me in the past in these. If you are looking for more vegan veggie-loaded muffins, these are also a reader favorite https://thenaturalnurturer.com/carrot-apple-vegan-muffins/
Really wanting to try this recipe but just wondering if I could use frozen spinach for this or does it need to be fresh? The fresh at my grocery store isn’t looking too hot right now lol
You can use frozen! I would defrost it first and drain off any of the extra liquid released from the spinach before adding it to the batter. And spinach wilts down a lot during the freezing process, I would suggest doing somewhere between 1/3-1/2 of thawed frozen.
Just made these, but I use the mini-muffin pans. I did use an egg, about 1-1/4 c spinach, used 2 Tbs of molasses instead of maple syrup and added 1/3 c of oatmeal because the batter seemed so liquid. They baked for 21 minutes, and are excellent. They’re soft, but not mushy at all.
I’m so glad these were a success for you!