Banana Nut Muffins

By hefk -
In parenting, there are things on which I hold my ground and things on which I "drop the rope," as a former colleague used to say. For a few months, I had dropped the rope about letting the kids eat E--o waffles every morning for breakfast until T began waking every morning with a daily declaration that it's, "wapple time."  Oh yes, it was cute, but a "wapple" a day is not ok by me. For starters, S needs her breakfast to get her through an entire morning at pre-K, so I added breakfast back to ground-holding territory. I've been making these with the kids. I'm hoping to keep it up with weekly baking of healthy breakfast recipes that I then pump up with additional protein, fiber, calcium, etc.  
This one is adapted from Simply.

3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed [I use my freezer stock, but I recently found I prefer just plain old overripe bananas before they hit the freezer]

1/3 cup melted butter [I plan to try to sub yogurt with the next batch]
3/4 cup sugar [I cut this by at least half]
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tbsp espresso or strong coffee (optional) [Since I make these with/for the kids, I sub a tsp of cinnamon or chai spice blend]
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cup of flour [I use 3/4C white and 3/4C of another, heartier flour like rye, wheat or spelt.]
[2-3 tsp ground flax meal]
1 cup chopped walnuts (toasted or raw) [or pecans or other fave nut]


Method

No need for a mixer with this recipe. [S&T both love to help with this recipe, start to finish.]
1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl.

2 Mix in the sugar, egg, espresso/spices and vanilla.

3 Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in.

4 Add the flour, mix until it is just incorporated. Fold in the chopped walnuts.

5 Pour mixture into a prepared muffin tin. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Check for doneness with a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin. If it comes out clean, it's done. Cool on a rack.

Makes 12 muffins. [we make mini muffins because the kids like to eat more than one at a time. makes 36 mini muffins]





Comments

Alissa said…
I made these tonight to stock the freezer for snacks to eat after the baby arrives. I followed your suggestions and subbed Greek yogurt for the butter, added ground flax seed, used 1/2 WW flour, less sugar, etc. They came out great. Not dense or dry (which sometimes happens when subbing out butter or adding in WW flour). Todd and I each ate one because they smelled so good coming out of the oven. I think I'll make another batch tomorrow as I still have more bananas in the freezer, and these were so easy to throw together. Thanks!
11:14 PM
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