Healthy Banana Muffins

If you've paid any attention to my blog at all, you've probably figured out that healthy really isn't my thing.  Delicious is my thing.  Unfortunately, the two often don't go hand-in-hand.  However, that doesn't stop my from trying healthy recipes that look or sound good.  The majority of the time, they're a flop and they never make it here.  But, every once in a while, I stumble upon a special recipe that is both healthy and delicious.  This, my friends, is one of those.  

These banana muffins contain no flour and no oil or butter.  I even reduced the amount of sugar from the original recipe and substituted honey instead.  These muffins are really dense, so it doesn't take a lot to fill you up.  They're also really moist.  And, I think you could really change the recipe up a lot by adding in different fruits as they are in season.  

Adapted from: Chase and Em

What you need:
2 1/2 Cups Quick Cooking Oats
1 Cup Plain Low Fat Greek Yogurt
2 Eggs
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1/4 Cup Honey
1 1/5 Tsp Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
2 Ripe Bananas
2 Tsp Cinnamon 

What you do:
1.  Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. 

2.  Line your muffin tins with muffin liners. 

3.  Place the quick cooking oats into your blender or food processor.  Blend until the oats are pulverized. 

4.  Place the rest of the ingredients into the blender with the oats and blend until fully mixed. (I may have a super weak blender, but this took quite a while.  I'd have to blend and then stir up and blend and stir up.  It wasn't difficult, but it wasn't accomplished all at once either). 

5.  Fill each cupcake liner until it's about 2/3 full and bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. 

Enjoy!

Banana Bread Muffins

This one of my family's recipes.  It is meant to make Banana Bread, but I always make muffins with the dough because they're quicker to make and because they're easier to grab and go if you're planning on making this for breakfast.  I have a bad habit of buying more bananas than I can eat before they start to get bad.  So, I often find browning bananas on my countertop.  I stick those browning bananas in the freezer, and when I want to make these muffins I just pull a few out -- they are perfect for this recipe.  If you are pulling bananas out of the freezer for this recipe, be aware that they thaw rather quickly.

Here's what I used:

1 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Butter, softened
1 Cup (about 3 medium) Bananas, mashed 
2 Eggs
2 Cups Flour
1 Tsp Baking Soda
1/3 Tsp Salt

Here's what I did:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line a Muffin Tin with liners.

2.  Cream the Butter and Sugar together.

3.  Add the Eggs to the butter/sugar mixture.

4.  Mix the bananas into the butter/sugar mixture.

5.  In a separate bowl, stir the dry ingredients together.

6.  Slowly incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ones.

7.  Fill each muffin cup about 2/3 of the way full.

8.  Bake the muffins for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

You can add nuts to your muffins if you'd like.  I do not like nuts, so I omit them from everything.  Simply add 1/2 Cup of Nuts to the dough between step 6 and 7. 

Enjoy!