Coconut SunButter Muffins

For the "no oil" people out there, this one is for you! This is my first attempt at making an oil-free muffin and they are so good - perfectly moist and not overly dense. Making good vegan keto muffins is hard, and the more restrictions you put in place, the harder it becomes to create a successful muffin. Not only do these muffins contain no added oil, they are also nut-free and can be made soy-free by using pea protein powder and pea milk. For sweetener, I am using pure monk fruit powder, so they are also free of sugar-alcohols and allulose. However, this is more by necessity than an attempt to make muffins that are free of these products. Before allulose was a thing, I always used pure monk fruit in my keto baking, and I have found that it is much easier to work with for certain things. It is quite expensive and less readily available, but a small tub lasts a really long time. Vegan keto baking recipes can be super finicky and I have only made this recipe with the products I typically use. Please ensure that your coconut milk and sunflower seed butter are well blended, and that your milk is at room temperature, to increase your chances of success. Enjoy and please let me know how they turn out!
Yield: 6 servings of 1 muffin each, totaling 6 muffins
Macros (per serving): 240 calories | 10g protein | 18g fat | 4g net carbs
Prep: 10 minutes | Bake: 35 minutes | Cool: 30 minutes
Storage: at room temperature for up to 12 hours or refrigerated for up to 3 days. Refrigerated muffins can be microwaved briefly (15-30 seconds) to bring back that fresh muffin warmth. ​✎
Warning: keto baking can be very finicky. I strongly suggest using a kitchen scale to weigh all ingredients for which gram and milliliter measurements are provided. If grams are not given, milliliters = grams.

​Dry ingredients:
  • ½ cup (40g) unsweetened shredded coconut
  • ¼ cup (30g) golden flaxseed meal ✎
  • ¼ cup (30g) coconut flour, sifted if lumpy
  • ¼ cup (28g) plain pea or soy protein powder ✎
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon or pumpkin spice
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon ​pure monk fruit powder ✎​
  • ⅛ teaspoon ​salt
Wet ingredients:
  • ¾ cup (180ml) unsweetened soy or pea milk, at room temperature
  • ⅓ cup (80ml) canned coconut milk, well blended
  • ⅓ cup (85g) unsweetened sunflower seed butter, well blended
  • 1 teaspoon red or white wine vinegar or neutral-flavored vinegar of choice
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
  2. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.
  3. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients.
  4. Prepare a 6-well muffin tin with parchment or silicone liners. ✎
  5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and swiftly whisk until no dry patches remain.
  6. Distribute the batter between the 6 muffin wells. The batter will extend slightly above the tops of the wells, but it will not rise much and won't overflow while baking.
  7. Optionally, decorate the muffins tops with additional shredded or flaked coconut and cinnamon.
  8. Place in the center of the oven and bake for 35 minutes.
  9. Remove the muffin tin from the oven and allow to cool on a wire cooling rack for about 5 minutes. Then, gently remove the muffins from the tin and allow to cool for at least an additional 30 minutes. Muffins that are still hot will seem under-baked.
  10. Enjoy slightly warm or at room temperature. ✎
✎ Notes:​
  • Golden flaxseed meal is much milder and more pleasant in flavor than brown flaxseed meal. Structurally, these muffins should turn out fine with brown flaxseed meal, but I'm not sure they would taste very nice.
  • You may be able to use a sweetened protein powder here and skip the monk fruit sweetener. I have made many baking recipes with either plain pea/soy protein powder or Vega Sport vanilla protein powder and had the same results. However, when I was testing the muffin recipe in my most recent book, I tried a couple other protein powders and found that these ones came out wet. If you're trying to avoid protein powders, you may be able to make these with ¼ cup (30g) lupin flour or defatted peanut flour instead. I haven't tried those flours in this recipe, but they worked successfully in place of protein powder in the muffin recipe in my second book.
  • I have not tried this recipe with any other type of sweetener and haven't had much success getting consistent and reliable results using granulated sweeteners (e.g. allulose or erythritol) in baking. This much pure monk fruit is roughly equivalent to 2½ to 4 tablespoons (7½ to 12 teaspoons) of sugar. If you can't use pure monk fruit powder, I'd suggest using a sweetness equivalent in concentrated/pure stevia or sucralose (i.e. Splenda). If using a liquid, add it to the wet ingredients. Beware of carb-containing bulking agents in come in some powdered sucralose products.  
  • If you're using paper liners, using good quality parchment liners, e.g. Paper Chef, makes a difference to how much muffin gets lost by being stuck to the liners when removing them.
  • Macros for this recipes are calculated with national nutritional data (i.e. NCCDB & USDA entries in Cronometer) for all ingredients apart from coconut milk (Aroy-D), sunflower seed butter (SunButter), and protein powder (NowFoods plain pea protein powder).
  • Macro numbers are rounded. Numbers equal to or greater than 10g are rounded to the nearest whole number (e.g. 10g, 11g, 12g, etc.) and numbers below 10g are rounded to the nearest 0.5g (0.5g, 1g, 1.5g ... 9g, 9.5g). Any numbers below 0.5g are given as is (e.g. 0.1g, 0.2g, etc.). Calories are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.