I know … beetroot and spinach (or pumpkin and chick peas!) are not ingredients you would normally associate with a chocolate muffin – but trust me, it works!

My tribe wolf them down and have no idea of the goodies hiding inside – yay! They are a standard lunchbox favourite – I even use this recipe to make the base of our birthday cakes now and everyone digs in!

See below the recipe for the coeliac friendly option and some different veggie variations

• 1 large cooked beetroot (approx 225g)*
• 2 handfuls of baby spinach
• 40g cocoa/30g cacao powder
• 70ml tasteless oil (rice bran oil, melted vegan butter & coconut oil work well) OR 70g sunflower seed butter
• 150ml oat/rice/soy/almond milk
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 90g maple syrup OR coconut sugar
• 280g spelt flour (half wholemeal)
• 2.5 tsp GF baking powder
• 6 tbsp aquafaba OR 2 whole eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• pinch Himilayan salt

*If you don’t have access to fresh beetroot, use an equal weight of tinned beetroot and omit 1 of the teaspoons of vinegar), or when my garden gives us an abundance, I puree and freeze in batches to add in instead.

In your processor/blender/bullet/thermal cooker place the milk, beetroot, vinegar vanilla, oil, spinach and aquafaba and blitz until the mix is smooth with no obvious ‘green bits’ 😉 (Speed 5, 10 seconds, scrape down, then speed 8 for 10 seconds, scrape and repeat if required). Then set the wet mix aside.

Mix together the flour, cocoa, salt, sugar and baking powder until evenly combined (speed 4, 8 seconds).

Whilst mixing the dry mix (use speed 4), gradually pour in the wet mix until well combined. Don’t over mix.

Scoop batter into lined muffin tins and bake in a preheated 180C oven for about 20 minutes or until top springs back when gently pressed.

Makes about 14, they freeze and defrost well and are especially delicious when slightly warmed.

To make these coeliac friendly: use rice, almond or soy milk and replace the spelt flour with 1 1/2 cup plain GF flour and 1/4 cup almond/seed meal.

To make a little variation on these, I switch out the spinach for a large handful of steamed sweet potato or 1/3 of a tin of chick peas. Just add them into the wet mix and blend at the same time as the beetroot. Yum!!

Enjoy 🙂