Flourless Peanut Butter Muffins — These gluten-free peanut butter muffins are made in a blender and come together in mere minutes. You’d never guess that these mini muffins are gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, and oil-free!
Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins
I put peanut butter, banana, and honey in the blender, and my daughter asked what kind of smoothie I was making. None, I said. I’m making muffins. What???
This goes down as the easiest and fastest batter I’ve ever made. Ready in about 17 seconds with the flip of a switch.
I’m a big fan of whisk-together batters, and nearly every blondie, brownie, bar, quick bread, muffin, and cake on my site is made with a whisk. I reserve my stand mixer for cookie dough, bread dough, and frosting.
But this peanut butter muffin batter is even easier than using a whisk. Just combine one egg, banana, peanut butter, honey, vanilla, and baking soda in a blender and blend, before stirring in chocolate chips.
Did you notice what’s missing in the ingredients list? Flour. Gluten. The muffins are gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free, dairy-free, oil-free, refined sugar-free, and they clock in at under 100 calories each based on SparkPeople’s calculator.
If you’re willing to give up the chocolate chips, you can shave off 35% of the calories. But I like chocolate.
I have a few recipes for flourless peanut butter cookies, as well as other peanut butter cookies that are gluten-free or that don’t use white sugar, brown sugar, butter, salt, or oil. But I had never tried to pull of a flourless muffin until now, and I’m sold because these are some of the softest, moistest, and best peanut butter muffins I’ve ever had.
For all the health claims that can be made about the muffins, the best part is that they taste every bit as good as muffins made with flour, gluten, and lots of added sugar.
Because there’s no flour, I was a bit worried that these blender muffins would turn out like peanut butter fudge, since there was no flour to fluff them up and provide the normal amount of cakiness found in a muffin, but I was wrong.
The egg, pinch of baking soda, and banana did the trick to give them the springiness and bounciness you want in a muffin. When I was stacking them, the muffins on the bottom were like little trampolines, ready to absorb the weight and bounced back.
Warm and fresh from the oven, these little guys were incredibly good. Soft and a little squishy, supremely moist, and tons of bold peanut butter flavor, complemented by melty chocolate chips.
You may want to just double the recipe and make a double batch from the get go. Muffins freeze beautifully and you can keep a stash in the freezer to toss into lunches or for an easy snack when your peanut butter and chocolate cravings hit.
At under 100 calories, have a few.
Peanut Butter Muffins Ingredients
For these peanut butter chocolate chip muffins, you’ll need:
- Banana
- Egg
- Creamy peanut butter
- Honey
- Vanilla extract
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Mini chocolate chips
Bananas are versatile workhorses in baking, and the banana here helps to add lightness, fluffiness, and natural sweetness since there’s only 3 tablespoons honey used to sweeten the entire recipe. And for those who don’t like bananas, you’re very safe here and you can hardly taste it.
My daughter did detect the banana, but I have a feeling that’s because she had a hawkeye on the ingredients as they went into the blender.
How to Make Peanut Butter Muffins in a Blender
To make this gluten-free mini muffin recipe, simply add everything but the chocolate chips into the blender and blend until smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand, and then spoon the batter into greased mini muffin tins.
I baked the muffins in my mini muffin pans and they only took 8 1/2 minutes to bake. I made 17 mini muffins, and filled the cavities to a solid 3/4 full. Don’t be surprised if they’re nicely domed in the oven, but fall a bit as they cool.
Let these peanut butter muffins cool for about 10 minutes before trying to take them from the muffin tins. These mini muffins are best fresh, but will keep for up to 5 days at room temperature.
Can I Make These as Regular-Sized Muffins?
I haven’t tested the recipe as full size muffins. You’ll probably yield about 8 or 9 and I’d start watching the clock closely at about 13 minutes and go from there, but I haven’t tried, and am purely guessing. After all, part of the appeal of this recipe is the mini size. Mini food is just so pop-able.
Can I Use an Egg Substitute in This Recipe?
I haven’t tried that myself, so I can’t say for sure if you can replace the egg with anything. If you try an egg replacement and it works, please leave me a comment down below so I can try it out myself!
Is There a Banana Substitute I Can Use?
I’m not sure! I’ve only ever made these peanut butter muffins as listed in the recipe card below, so I don’t know if you can substitute the banana for anything. You really can’t taste it though!
Can I Use Another Type of Nut Butter?
Possibly, yes. I personally recommend using peanut butter from a brand like Jif or Skippy. But if you have a peanut allergy, you may be able to use sun butter or almond butter. Just note that both are much thinner and runnier than peanut butter, and I don’t know if either will work.
Can I Use Muffin Liners Instead of Greasing the Pan?
I personally skip muffin liners (I’m too lazy to line all those mini muffin tins!), but I don’t see why you couldn’t use them for this recipe.
Can I Freeze Muffins?
Yes, these gluten-free peanut butter muffins freeze like a dream. To freeze these, first let them come to room temperature, then seal them inside a freezer bag. When you’re ready to enjoy them, either reheat them in the oven (set to a very low temperature), or simply place on your counter to thaw.
Tips for the Best Peanut Butter Muffins
I used store-bought peanut butter and always recommend baking with something like Jif or Skippy because natural and homemade peanut butter tends to be thinner, runnier, and can separate. If you try natural PB, I don’t know what the results will be.
I used mini chocolate chips because the size is perfectly proportionate for the mini muffins. Make sure to stir in the chips by hand at the end, rather than add them with other ingredients. You don’t want pulverized chips.
One trick to make your muffins really shine is to sprinkle a few extra chips on the top of each muffin before baking for a nice visual pop.
Pin This Recipe
Enjoy AverieCooks.com Without Ads! 🆕
Go Ad Free
Flourless Mini Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 medium ripe banana, peeled
- 1 large egg
- heaping 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter, I recommend using classic storebought peanut butter, and not natural or homemade
- 3 tablespoons honey, agave or maple syrup may be substituted
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
- heaping 1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F. Prepare mini muffin pans by spraying very well with floured cooking spray, or grease and flour the pans; set aside. If keeping gluten-free for health reasons, simply use cooking spray or grease the pan.
- To the canister of a blender, add first 7 ingredients, through optional salt, and blend on high speed until smoothy and creamy, about 1 minute.
- Add chocolate chips and stir in by hand; don’t use the blender because it will pulverize them.
- Using a tablespoon or small cookie scoop that’s been sprayed with cooking spray (helps batter slide off spoon or scoop easily), form rounded 1 tablespoon mounds and place mounds into prepared pans. Each cavity should be filled to a solid 3/4 full.
- Bake for 8 to 9 minutes, or until the tops are set, domed, springy to the touch, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no batter. Due to their small size and oven variance, make sure to watch your muffins closely, and bake until done. Allow muffins to cool in pans for about 10 minutes, or until they’ve firmed up and are cool enough to handle.
- Muffins are best fresh, but will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 4 months.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
©averiecooks.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited.
More Easy Gluten-Free Recipes:
Flourless Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Mini Blender Muffins — No refined sugar, flour, or oil and only 75 calories! They taste amazing!
Mini Flourless Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Blender Muffins – The EASIEST pumpkin muffins ever!! Everything is mixed together in your blender!
Flourless Chocolate Cake – A classy, elegant cake that’s ultra rich, fudgy, and tastes better than what you’d get in a fancy restaurant and it’s so EASY!!
Flourless Blueberry Banana Muffins — No flour or oats, no butter, and no added white or brown sugar yet they’re incredibly moist, super soft, perfectly sweet, and are bursting with blueberries.
Best Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies — These cookies are full of bold, robust peanut butter flavor, chewy around the edges, and perfectly soft and tender in the middle.
Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Blender Cake — The cake is soft, extremely moist, dense but not heavy, and has bold peanut butter flavor that’s complemented by chocolate.
Flourless Peanut Butter and Chocolate Brownies — These are the fudgiest brownies I’ve ever made, and that’s what happens when there’s no flour.
Just pulled my first batch it of the oven and can’t wait to eat one (or more!) and see what the kids think! One note, the text of your blog lists baking powder, but ingredients list says baking soda. I used powder because I know that’s what helps them rise. Thought I’d mention it in case anyone has had trouble when making these. Btw, my house smells delicious :)
Thanks for the info. In the discussion of the blog post, I had written both baking powder and baking soda, and in the recipe, I had written baking soda. It’s definitely baking soda that I used. Thanks for the catch and I updated the 1 reference to baking powder in the blog post, and that’s changed to soda now too. The fact that you used powder rather than soda probably just made yours extra springy (and good to know it works with either and that they didn’t overflow or anything!) but it’s soda I used in mine. Glad you love them!
I love youuuu for this recipe!
This look fantastic! You probably want to take the paleo label off the recipe though, because the peanut butter is definitely not part of a paleo diet. Still, I’m going to experiment with this using almond butter and sun nut butter. I suspect I’ll like the results I get with the sun nut butter better since overall the consistency and flavor are closer to peanut butter. Thanks for sharing this! :)
Great and enjoy them! I updated the description. Thanks!
I’ve made these muffins twice and I love them! And so do my coworkers. Thanks so much for the great recipe. I make them regular sized instead of mini, so the baking time is 16 min at 400 degrees in my oven. I also use dark chocolate chunks and add some ground flaxseed meal for fiber.
Glad to hear they’re such a hit with you and your coworkers and that 16mins at 400F works well! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the reply!(: yep i omitted the honey for the spec version and added an extra dollop of the spread in the middle of each muffin, it tasted great! Oh and i forgot to mention, I also added a dollop of homemade strawberry jam in each of the PB ones (inspired by your PB&J muffins – such a great idea!) (:
Oh wow, love how you ‘filled’ them! With jelly for PB&J and extra spec (smart to omit the honey, although I wouldn’t mind if they were pretty sweet!). Your ideas sound GREAT!
Hi! I tried this recipe yesterday and I’m amazed by the texture – so soft, bouncy and moist. No different at all from – in fact better than – a regular muffin. I’m wondering if the amount of vanilla is correct though – 1 tbsp gave mine a bitter aftertaste. I tried a 2nd batch with speculoos spread in place of the peanut butter and just a tsp of vanilla and this turned out heaps better! Thanks for the recipe anyhow, it’s a keeper!
I love vanilla and the more the merrier (never get a bitter aftertaste) but if you find it better to dial it back, to taste, of course do so. Glad you love the recipe and I can imagine spec spread was wonderful in them…so much sweeter than PB already! I should try that :)
I made these by the recipe, although I reduced the vanilla from 1 T to 1 tsp as I thought the amount might be wrong. I liked them. Next time I will decrease the honey/agave to just 1 T as they were sweet. They took a bit longer for my oven to cook these — 10 minutes on convection at 400 degrees. It made 17.
Thanks for the recipe!
Sounds like you probably had a juicy/quite sweet banana; thus the extra sweetness and the longer-to-bake time; but ovens and climates and ingredients all vary. Always bake til done which is what you did and sounds like they worked out well!
I just clicked over here from the Chef in Training link party because anything flourless appeals to me. We don’t have to eat gluten-free but try really hard not to eat very much refined flour. These muffins look like they have such good structure and texture it’s hard to believe they don’t have flour. I’m going to make these today.
And then I spent A LOT of time looking through your other recipes. They look yummy and nutritious. I’m a new follower.
Thanks for finding me and looking through my recipes! Love Nikki and her party!
I found these a few days ago, and was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to make them for Bible study tomorrow night! My house smells AMAZING, and I am only sad that they are still too hot to bite into! Couple of things:
1. I used my Magic Bullet. I put the ingredients in in the order they were written. Next time, I might try putting in and blending everything but the pb, and adding that slowly – my little bullet had a hard time with it – eventually, we got there, but it took a while to get to the bananas because the pb clogged up the blade. Oops! :)
2. I made 24 mini muffins with little liners, and I still had batter to eat when I tossed the pan in the oven – not gonna lie – I could probably blend this up, leave out the egg, and drink it like a smoothie. What’s 66 calories, times 17 all at one shot, anyway??!? :)
3. I am SO excited to eat them, and to serve them to friends. They look perfectly golden brown. They bounced right back when I pushed on the top. My house, again, smells amazing.
Thanks for the great post, Averie! I will be reviewing it on my Pinterest board, and it will probably show up on my blog at some point, too, linking back to this post!!
Glad you love them so much! I made 17 and glad to hear you made 24. Someone else wrote in to say she only made like 6 or 7 I believe. And yes I can see where a Bullet may struggle with that last bit of PB to break it all down. I’d add it at the end if I was using one. Thanks for trying them!
I used the blender jar of my magic bullet, adding things one at a time and blending after each item and it worked great.
Seriously girl, you are the queen of making gluten free look ah-mazing!! These sound so awesome and I’m excited with how easy they are!!! :)
Thanks, Jocelyn! I appreciate it!
I made these today using agave and a “flax egg” in place of the regular egg. I was a bit apprehensive, but they turned out GREAT! Yum! Thanks for a super easy, and delicious recipe! We’ll definitely be making these again.
That’s awesome so you kept them VEGAN and GF! Nice!! I’m sure others will see this comment and now we know, it works! Thanks for sharing!
Jackie – did you use natural PB? That’s all I have on hand. I was planning to use the same (agave/flax egg) – so thanks for letting me know it works!
Averie, the innards of this muffin is calling my name. So gooey and peanut-buttery. Pinning!
thanks for the pin!
I love the idea of a blender muffin! These look delicious. I am a sucker for mini muffins, they are so cute!
I need to try these ASAP. They look great and I love it all goes in a blender. I waited so long to get a mini muffin tin but now I use it all of the time. One of my most favorite baking tools.
These were super delicious! The flavor was spot on, and you never would have known that they didn’t have any flour or oil. However, none of mine came out of the muffin tin properly. Despite being greased and floured, they stuck like crazy and broke apart. I think that next time (oh yes, there will definitely be a next time because these are divine!) I’m going to make regular size muffins using liners, which should help with the sticking issue. Thanks for the wonderful recipe!
Glad you loved them! I use Pam for Baking with unlined muffin pans. I swear by it. It’s a wayyyyyyy better product than just regular cooking spray when we’re talking unlined muffin pans (or bread in a loaf pan). I swear by it. Pick that up and you will never have sticking issues again (unless you have some crazy freakish pans…haha!) LMK if you try that spray or also try as larger muffins!
Maybe you missed something in the recipe? Mine came out very easily using Crisco and flour. I wasn’t expecting my muffins to be so light and fluffy – wonderful! Will make again. I could definitely taste the banana, but I appreciated that it wasn’t overwhelming. Thanks for the recipe!
Glad the recipe is a keeper for you & you’ll make them again! I too was surprised about how light & fluffy they turn out!
Your muffins always looks so perfect and symmetrical, mine are usually misshapen and awkward. :D These look downright scrumptious!
Make sure when you put the batter in the muffin pan, it’s smooth (like cake batter in a cake pan) OR you can kind of center-load it, having a tiny dollop more in the center to create a domed effect. This can backfire though if it’s a heavy batter b/c they don’t rise as well.
These are so amazing! Literally anyone can eat them since they have nothing that people are allergic to!
EXACTLY!!! Thank you for saying what I was trying to say – in one sentence :)