These bakery-style vegan banana chocolate chip muffins are incredibly fluffy with a moist and tender crumb. Full of banana flavor and loaded with gooey chocolate chips, they are topped with a crispy pecan streusel topping that adds an irresistible crunch!
Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175°C). Lightly grease a 6-cavity muffin pan with vegan butter. Then, place a muffin paper liner into each cavity. Set aside.
Pecan Streusel
Mix together all of the ingredients. Add the flour, chopped pecans, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and butter to a small mixing bowl. Using your hands, mix all of the ingredients together until they form a slightly crumbly dough. Set aside.
Muffins
Blend the bananas. Peel the bananas and add them to a high-speed blender. Add the oil and vanilla extract, and blend on high for about 10 seconds or until smooth. Set aside.
Whisk together the dry ingredients. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
Combine. Next, pour the blended bananas into the mixing bowl containing the dry ingredients. Use a wooden spoon to mix until well combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips. Add the chocolate chips and mix again until they are evenly incorporated into the batter.
Fill the pan. Fill each cavity of the pan with the batter until it reaches about three-quarters full.
Top with the streusel. Using your hands, crumble the streusel topping evenly over each cavity. Try to make pieces that are approximately 1/2 inch (1.2 cm) thick.
Bake. Finally, transfer the muffin pan to the oven and bake for about 25 minutes or until golden brown on top. Allow the muffins to cool inside the pan for about 15 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
You can store the muffins wrapped individually in plastic wrap for up to 4 days at room temperature or 6 days in the refrigerator.
Notes
Use ripe bananas.
Perfectly yellow, unripe bananas won't do it here. First, your banana muffins would not be sweet enough, and second, they would lack banana flavor. For optimal taste and texture, you must absolutely use ripe and spotty bananas.Can I ripen the bananas in the oven? Well, it's an option, but from my experience, nothing beats naturally ripe bananas. That's why I think it's worth waiting for your bananas to ripen on the counter for a few extra days before making this recipe.
Fill the cavities almost to the top.
Looking for round and puffy muffins just like the ones from the bakery? Fill your pan almost to the top, AND use a crown muffin pan. These types of pans feature cavities with flared edges that allow the muffins to puff into a mushroom shape!
Decorate with sliced bananas!
Take your muffins a step up by decorating them with a slice of banana! To do so, start by cutting half of a banana into six thick slices. To prevent the banana from turning dark, toss the slices with about 1 teaspoon of lemon juice. Then, arrange the banana slices on top of each muffin before baking. Keep in mind that muffins without any banana on top will keep longer, though.
Top with extra chocolate chips.
For better-looking muffins, sprinkle chocolate chips over each muffin cavity before baking.