This high-protein, veggie-packed breakfast is the perfect spin on a breakfast muffin with an Indian twist. It is healthy and super easy to meal-prep!
Make these and prep ahead of time so you can just pull them out when you are hungry, re-heat them, and enjoy them with some Indian pickle, and some yoghurt.
Ingredients & Substitutions to make Upma Breakfast Muffins
- For the muffin base: coarse and fine semolina (sub with polenta), plant-based yoghurt
- Veggies: Red onion (sub with any other type of onion or shallots), carrots, peas, green chilies, ginger (feel free to add other veggies but keep the volume constant as it may increase the water content in the muffins)
- Protein: Smoked/regular firm tofu pressed (to remove excess water) and grated
- Tempering: extra virgin coconut oil, mustard seeds, urad dal, cashews, peanuts, curry leaves (feel free to remove ingredients that you don’t have at hand. This is a rough guide to a really good tempering. The very basic one would be just mustard seeds and curry leaves).
Follow @beextravegant for other delicious, easy and vegan recipes.
Check out my other recipes:
- Healthy Vermicelli Upma recipe: High protein
- Semolina Gnocchi/balls Stir Fry
- Ven Pongal
- Vegetable Upma
High Protein Upma Muffins
These high-protein, veggie-packed breakfast is the perfect spin on a breakfast muffin with an Indian twist. It is healthy and super easy to meal-prep!
Ingredients
For the upma muffin base:
- 1 cup coarse and fine semolina 160 g
- ½ cup plant-based yoghurt I use soy yoghurt, about 122 g
- 1 cup water 240 ml
- ½ red onion finely diced
- 1 carrot medium-sized grated
- 1 green chilli pepper minced
- ½ inch ginger minced
- ½ block or 250 g Smoked/regular firm tofu pressed (to remove excess water) and grated
- ½ tsp baking soda or 1 tsp baking powder
- Salt to taste
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
Tempering:
- 1 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 1 tsp urad dal
- 1 tbsp cashews
- 1 tbsp peanuts
- 6-7 curry leaves
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180C/360F.
- Grease a muffin tin with oil and set aside.
- Mix together all the ingredients (semolina, yoghurt, water, salt, diced onion, grated carrots, grated tofu, minced ginger, minced red chilli pepper, baking powder) except lemon juice in a large mixing bowl.
- In a mini tempering pan, add the coconut oil on medium heat and add the mustard seeds.
- Once they start popping, add urad dal. When the urad dal turns very slightly golden, add the peanuts and then the cashews.
- When they become light brown, add the curry leaves and let them become crispy.
- Immediately add this to the Upma mixture and stir it in.
- Finally, add the lemon juice and stir it in.
- Pour or spoon the batter into the muffin tin, filling each cup to the top.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the muffins are done and look slightly golden brown on the sides.
- Take it out and let it cool down completely before removing them with a spatula.
- Serve with some mango pickle and a cup of chai!
Notes
Storage: Store them in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. When you are ready to eat, take out the muffins and reheat them in a microwave for a couple of minutes on the highest power.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Super easy, very delicious 😀
This recipe is great because you can subbed out spices and vegetables with whatever you have lying around! Makes this a versatile recipe.
Made double the amount and froze half. Used Polenta because I love the corn flavor.
10/10 will be making these often!
Tried this and it turned out amazing. Really enjoyed having it with my entire family and it was a big hit.
Yay! Sharing food with family is the best! So happy you guys enjoyed it 😀
Hi, can you freeze these for school lunches? Thanks
YES!!! They freeze well in airtight bags. Just thaw the night before consumption.
This turned out to be way yummier than expected. So easy, quick and healthy! Thanks for this super unique recipe.
Hi, I love your recipe. I keep making these once a month to freeze and have for breakfast. Could you please tell me what the calories per muffin could be?
Thank you for the recipe!