Fluffy Vegan Banana Muffins

The every-other-Saturday visits to Baker have become the backbone of my weeks — not every Saturday, because senior year demands more, but every other, because MawMaw Shirley demands more than senior year. She is eighty-one and the naps are longer and the cooking is slower and the garden is smaller (she planted only tomatoes and herbs this year, not the full garden of previous years, and the reduction was not discussed but was noticed) and every visit is a visit I am grateful for because the visits are finite and the finiteness is the thing I carry but do not speak about.

We made her biscuits Saturday — the flaky ones, cold butter and warm hands. Her hands are not as warm as they were. The circulation is slower. She wore gloves in the kitchen, which she has never done, and the gloves were thin cotton, the kind a gardener wears, and she said, "My hands are cold," and I said, "It is August, MawMaw," and she said, "My hands are cold regardless," and we did not speak about it further because some things do not need discussion, they need biscuits, and we made the biscuits and the biscuits were perfect because MawMaw Shirley's biscuits are always perfect, cold hands or warm, gloves or bare, eighty-one or otherwise.

I have been thinking about medical school applications. The applications open in the spring. I need to decide where to apply. The answer has always been LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans — the state school, the affordable option, the school that will keep me in Louisiana, which is where I need to be because the kids in north Baton Rouge are not in Houston or Atlanta or Durham. They are here. I need to be here. But "here" requires getting in, and getting in requires the application, and the application requires the essay, and the essay requires that I explain, in 5,300 characters, why I want to be a doctor.

I know why. The answer is MawMaw Shirley and the roux and the flood and DeAndre and the children at the library who look at me like I am someone who might understand them. The answer is the kitchen. The answer has always been the kitchen. I just need to write it in a way that a medical school admissions committee can understand, and the challenge is translating kitchen language into application language without losing the truth of it, and the truth is: I want to be a doctor because MawMaw Shirley taught me to feed people, and medicine is feeding on a different scale.

MawMaw Shirley’s biscuits will always be hers — cold butter, warm hands, and eighty-one years of knowing exactly what she’s doing. But when I got back home to Baton Rouge that Saturday evening, still turning her words and her garden and her cotton gloves over in my mind, I needed to bake something of my own. Something I could make without her standing next to me, something that still felt like feeding people the way she taught me to. These banana muffins are that recipe: simple enough to make alone, soft enough to feel like comfort, and the kind of thing I can share with whoever needs it — because that’s what the kitchen is for.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 22 minutes | Total Time: 32 minutes | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

3 very ripe medium bananas, mashed (about 1 1/4 cups)
1/3 cup melted coconut oil or neutral vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened plain plant-based milk (oat, almond, or soy)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
Optional: 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips or chopped walnuts

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners or lightly grease each cup with oil.
Mash the bananas. In a large mixing bowl, peel and mash the ripe bananas thoroughly with a fork until almost no large lumps remain. The riper the bananas, the sweeter and more flavorful your muffins will be.
Mix the wet ingredients. Whisk the melted coconut oil, granulated sugar, and brown sugar into the mashed banana until combined. Add the plant-based milk and vanilla extract and stir until smooth.
Add the dry ingredients. Sprinkle the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt over the wet mixture. Gently fold everything together with a spatula or wooden spoon until just combined — do not overmix or the muffins will be dense. A few small streaks of flour are fine.
Fold in mix-ins. If using chocolate chips or walnuts, fold them in gently now.
Fill the muffin cups. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. For extra-fluffy tops, you can fill them slightly higher.
Bake. Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until the tops are golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs. Do not overbake.
Cool. Let the muffins rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. They are wonderful warm, but the texture firms up and the flavor deepens as they cool completely.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fluffy Vegan Banana Muffins — When Biscuits Aren’t Enough, You Bake Something New