Easy muffin tin Vegan Potato Cakes are a great side dish or meal prep component. They’re packed with veggies and reheat beautifully.
Baked Vegan Potato Cakes
These vegan potato cakes are packed with veggies, and you make them right in a muffin pan! They are super easy to make.
To start, cook some potatoes on the stovetop or in the Instant Pot, and saute a few other veggies in olive oil until they soften. Transfer the cooked potatoes and veggies and to a large bowl, and add the remaining ingredients.
One you have everything in the bowl, it’s time to mix and mash. I like to use a big dinner fork for this part. It’s OK to have some potato chunks in your dough, as long as you do a pretty thorough mash, and the final product is a thick, sticky dough.
Divide the dough between the 12 sections of a lined muffin pan, pressing it down into each section. Then, it’s time to bake those potato cakes to perfection!
Making Potato Cakes Without Egg
With a recipe like this, you need a binder. In a conventional potato cake, egg is often doing that work. In a vegan recipe, though, you’re not going to use egg. And there are three things that help bind these potato cakes together.
First, the potato. Potato starch is a natural binder, and when you mash a potato, you release some of that starch.
The second binder you’re using here is flaxmeal. Normally, when you make a flax egg, you want to whisk the flax meal with water and let it sit to thicken. In this recipe, though, you can just mix the flax right into the batter, because the flax will soak up moisture from the batter as you blend it together.
One important note: You must use flax meal. Do NOT use whole flax seeds for this recipe. Flax seeds do not soak up moisture, and they will not give you the binding power you need. I don’t want your potato cakes to fall apart on you!
Chickpea flour is also a great binder. It can go by other names: garbanzo bean flour, besan, or gram flour. Graham flour is not the same thing, so it will not work in this recipe. Please do not substitute other flours in place of the chickpea flour, because your potato cakes will end up too soft.
How to Serve and Store Them
I tend to serve these alongside dishes that pair well with mashed potatoes. Here are some ideas for what to serve with your potato cakes:
- Baked Tofu
- Instant Pot Pinto Beans
- Crunchy Panko Tofu
- A Tempeh Reuben
- Lentil Sloppy Joes
- Black Bean Burgers
When my kid was little, though, I’d fully serve him a couple of these as his whole meal. He loved them!
And, to be honest, I would eat a few as my lunch, too, when I was very hungry and too busy to make anything else to go with.
These potato cakes will keep for three to four days in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Let them cool completely before transferring to the storage container, though, because otherwise the inside of the container gets moist and icky from the steam.
There are tasty hot or cold, but if you want to reheat your leftovers, you have three options:
- Pan Frying: Pop a couple of potato cakes into a oiled frying pan on medium heat, flatten with a spatula, and brown each side for just a few minutes. YUM!
- Microwave: Place 1-2 potato cakes on a microwave-safe plate. Heat on high for 45-90 seconds, depending on the strength of your microwave.
- Toaster Oven: Place them on a piece of foil in the toaster oven, and bake at 350F for 5-10 minutes, until warmed through.
Vegan Potato Cakes
Ingredients
- 2 cups cubed Yukon Gold or red potatoes – 1" cubes
The Veggie Mixture
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 cup minced broccoli – (see note)
- 1/2 cup shredded carrots
- 1/2 cup minced onion
- 2 cloves garlic – minced
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
The Rest of the Ingredients
- 1/4 cup chickpea flour – see note
- 2 tablespoons yellow mustard
- 2 tablespoons flax meal
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast – optional
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 450F.
Cook the Potatoes (2 options)
- On the stove: combine the potatoes with enough water to cover in a pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 15-20 minutes, until they're fork-tender. Drain.
- In the Instant Pot: combine the potatoes and 1/2 cup of water in the Instant Pot. Cook at high pressure for 5 minutes, then do a 10-minute natural release, then drain.
Make the Veggie Mixture
- In a frying pan, heat the oil on medium-high heat and cook the broccoli, carrots, onion, garlic, and salt until the veggies get soft, about 5-7 minutes
Make the Potato Cakes
- Combine the veggie mixture with the drained potatoes and the remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Use a fork to mix everything together, mashing the potatoes, as you mix, until you have a thick, sticky dough.
- Press the mixture into 12 lined muffin tins.
- Bake for 25 minutes, and let the cakes cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Notes
- If broccoli isn’t your thing, you can use any dark, leafy green you like in its place, like kale or collard greens.
- About the Chickpea Flour: Chickpea flour is also called garbanzo bean flour, gram flour (NOT graham flour), or besan. Any of these will work in this recipe.
- These potato cakes will keep for 3-4 days in the refrigerator.
- You can serve these hot or cold, and they make great leftovers. My favorite way to reheat them is pan frying. Just pop a couple of potato cakes into a oiled frying pan on medium heat, flatten with a spatula, and brown each side for just a few minutes. YUM!
- Other reheating methods:, microwave 1-2 potato cakes for 60 seconds on a microwave-safe plate. You can also put them on a piece of foil in the toaster oven at 350F for 5-10 minutes, until warmed through.
Jes
Yes, yes, and yes please! Potato anything all day 🙂 Hopefully Darrol will come around to broccoli soon; I mean, it’s kindof the best 🙂
Becky Striepe
Haha I agree! What’s weird about the broccoli thing is that he will eat other greens. He picks kale out of his pasta to eat first! Maybe it’s a texture thing.