Banana Soy Muffins with pomegranate pear syrup

Weekend Breakfast Blogging had my attention over the last couple of days - after the soy pancakes turned out great, I really wanted to make another soy-based breakfast recipe. Kind of hard to work primarily with soy flour though - it has no gluten content, which means no elasticity and there is no assistance during fermentation which is what helps the bread rise when baking. In addition to these, gluten helps keep the shape of the bread since it firms up when cooked.

Gluten resources for those interested:

Gluten on Wikipedia
Gluten composition in cereals and gluten disease
Gluten free recipes

Anyway, after poking around several cookbooks and sites, I couldn't quite find any cake or bread recipe that didn't use a combination of soy flour with either wheat or rice or triticum flour. Oh well, guess I just had to try it out - and hope that the end result is somewhat edible. I decided to play it safe and try a banana muffin recipe with soy flour. And to make things even simpler, I microwaved them - that's what happens when you clean your kitchen shelves and find this odd looking microwaveable muffin tray :)

Banana Soy Muffins
Microwaved, no less!

Servings: 6 muffins

1/2 cup soy flour
1/4 cup egg whites (I used Nulaid)
1 t baking powder
1 t olive oil
2 small overripe bananas
6-7 almonds - chopped

Grease the muffin tray with oil spray.
Beat all ingredients together till the batter is smooth and thick.
Dole out equal portions into each of the muffin holes (is there a real name for these?).
Microwave for 8-9 minutes.

Drizzle some pomegranate-pear syrup over each muffin and let them sit for a few minutes before noshing :)

Any good?

They are pretty good! I'm eating one as I type and I'm really liking it :) The shapes are kind of wonky, they almost look like a hybrid of muffins and scones! But they turned out pretty soft and moist, not really chewy (hell, I need some gluten for that!), but the slightly sweet flavour of the soy flour along with the bananas made the muffins pretty tasty even without the syrup! And it took all of 15 minutes!



This recipe is a definite keeper. And I have a submission for WBB (Nandita's brainchild) - this goes to Rajitha who is hosting this month's event - themed Soy. Yay!