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Banana Muffins

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These banana muffins are super moist, soft, and fluffy, with a perfectly sweet banana flavor; BUT with less sugar and oil than most other banana muffins!  

The Best Sweet Moist Healthy Banana Muffins

Tips on How to Make the Best Banana Muffins

The perfect banana muffin is light, fluffy, and moist, and has a golden brown outside edge.  It also has plenty of sweet banana flavor with every bite.  These are the tips we have found to help you make a delicious and healthy banana muffin.

  1. Use the ripest bananas that you can find.  Ripe bananas have much more flavor.
  2.  Fill your muffin tins nearly full if you want a high-domed muffin.  Fill any empty tins half full of water.
  3. Make sure that your batter is thick. If your batter is too thin and you fill the tin to the top, it will run over before it sets.  Your batter should be spoonable, not pourable; so add a little more flour if you need to.
  4. Your muffin pans should be heavy and dark and nonstick.  We prefer making muffins without liners for this recipe.  Just make sure you spray each muffin tin cavity so that your muffins don’t stick.
  5. You need a way to measure out the same amount of batter for each muffin tin.  Two scoops with this scoop fills your tin exactly to the top.
  6. You want your bananas to be mashed really well.  In this recipe, you actually blend the wet ingredients together in a blender.  This gives you the smoothest texture ever, which we have found kids really love the best.
The Best Sweet Moist Healthy Banana Muffins

All About Bananas For Baking Muffins

When you are using bananas for baking, you want to make sure they are really ripe.  But how ripe should they be?  Can a banana be too ripe to use?  What if your bananas aren’t ripe enough but you want to use them to make muffins?  Read on to answer these questions.

How Ripe Should Bananas Be To Use for Baking?

It might be tempting to use a banana for baking that has started developing a few brown spots.  But it is not ready yet!  A banana must be really ripe — nearly all brown to give you that luscious banana flavor in banana bread and muffins.  So just be patient and let those bananas do their ripening thing.

For the sweetest possible banana bread/muffins/smoothies/etc, let the banana peel turn completely black, and then use the banana before the insides turn to dark brown or black since that means the banana is going bad.

How Can you Make Bananas Ripen Faster? 

  • Leave the bananas together in the bunch.  They ripen faster together than separate.
  • Place bananas in a brown paper bag and close loosely. Ethylene will build up and circulate within the bag, speeding up the ripening process. You can also put a ripe fruit such as an apple or tomato in the bag as well. These other fruits also emit ethylene and will speed up the bananas ripening even faster.

Can your Bananas Be Too Ripe To Bake With? 

When your bananas are completely black and the inside is very brown this is when they can start to go bad.  They are likely too ripe when there is a fermented and alcoholic smell.

One thing to know is as bananas ripen, the starch in the banana is converted into sugar. This process keeps going until all of the starch is converted to sugar which makes the banana more mushy but also a lot sweeter and perfect for baking.  This is why black bananas are often preferred for breads and muffins.  When the peel has turned black, the banana has converted almost all the starch to sugar and has gotten as sweet as it can before it goes bad.

The Best Sweet Moist Healthy Banana Muffins

Are Banana Muffins Healthy?

How healthy a muffin is all comes down to the ingredients you use.  A muffin can be just like cake if you use lots of sugar, oil and other processed ingredients.  Here are a few tips for making a healthier muffin.

  1. Decrease some of the fat. Usually just 3 to 4 tablespoons of oil or butter for each batch of 8 to to 12 muffins is enough to keep your muffins tender, moist, and tasty.
  2. Use half whole wheat flour, white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour Replace half the all purpose flour in your muffin recipe for any of those options.  They will add fiber and lots more vitamins and minerals.
  3. Add fruit to replace some of the oil or butter Using your favorite fruit or vegetable puree (pure canned pumpkin, applesauce, mashed bananas) can replace the same amount of oil (up to half) in your favorite muffin recipe. This will increase the nutrition, moisture, tenderness and natural sweetness of your muffins.
  4. Add healthy add-ins to boost nutrition Berries, chopped fresh fruit, dried fruit pieces, shredded carrots, shredded zucchini and mini dark chocolate chips are all good sources of vitamins and minerals and extra fiber.
  5. Use yogurt or buttermilk. Replacing your milk with these ingredients adds moisture, but also protein and vitamins and minerals.
The Best Sweet Moist Healthy Banana Muffins

Can You Freeze Banana Muffins?

Yes!  Muffins are a great food to freeze.  We usually double the batch we make and freeze the second batch for later.  They are great to pull out of your freezer for a quick breakfast or even an after school snack.  These are the tips we have found that work best for freezing muffins.

To Freeze Muffins:

  • Allow muffins to cool down to room temperature after freezing.
  • Place muffins flat on a tray and freeze for about an hour, until solid.
  • Transfer muffins into a freezer bag and keep in freezer up to three months.

To Thaw Frozen Muffins:

  • Thaw at room temperature.  This takes about 30 minutes.
  • In a microwave, place unwrapped muffin on a napkin, microwave-safe paper towel, or plate. Microwave on HIGH about 30 seconds for each muffin.
  • In a conventional oven, wrap muffins in foil. Heat at 350°F and bake 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the muffins.
The Best Sweet Moist Healthy Banana Muffins

More Banana Muffin Recipes

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3.8 from 39 votes

Banana Muffin

These banana muffins are super moist, soft, and fluffy, with a perfectly sweet banana flavor; BUT with less sugar and oil than most other banana muffins! 

Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time18 minutes
Total Time33 minutes
Course: Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Servings: 18
Calories: 106kcal

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Add 18 liners to muffin tins. Set aside.
  • Mix almond milk, eggs, sugar, bananas, coconut oil and vanilla in a blender until smooth.
  • In a large mixing bowl, stir together cinnamon, flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in the wet ingredients while gently mixing together. Stir just until combined.
  • Pour batter into muffin cups filling 3/4 full.
  • Bake for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Nutrition

Calories: 106kcal | Carbohydrates: 19g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 3g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 21mg | Sodium: 87mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 8g
Keyword : Banana Muffin

www.superhealthykids.com

The Best Sweet Moist Healthy Banana Muffins

Natalie Monson

I'm a registered dietitian, mom of 4, avid lover of food and strong promoter of healthy habits. Here you will find lots of delicious recipes full of fruits and veggies, tips for getting your kids to eat better and become intuitive eaters and lots of resources for feeding your family.

Learn More about Natalie

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Recipe Rating




18 Comments

5 stars
Great recipe! I used whole milk instead of almond, honey instead of sugar, white flour for all of it and then added 7 prunes to the blender mix. My toddler loved it! Thank you from one mama to another.

5 stars
Wonderful recipe! I was short a banana so I used a purée pouch that contained banana, apple and butternut squash. Since the wet ingredients got puréed I also threw a handful of spinach in, and subbed the sugar for 1/4 brown sugar. Also used the mini muffin tin and baked for about 10 min. My 3 year old loves them!

3 stars
These tasted good…especially with some butter melted on them. I substituted 1 TBSP applesauce for one of the TBSP of oil. I used muffin liners and the muffins stuck terribly to them. I was very disappointed because so much stuck that we only got a tiny muffin from each one. Anyone else had this problem? I fuel I’ll try spraying the liners next time.

Tree nut allergy here – what can I substitute for coconut oil? Is canola workable? Thanks! Love your recipes!

In the text above the recipe you mentioned using yogurt or buttermilk. Is that in addition to the other ingredients or a substitute for the milk?

Just curious.
Can I use almond flour or almond meal instead of regular flour? Or would it be too dry?
I like using paper cupcake wrappers for all my muffins but it sounds like it won’t work with the recipe. What is the best way to freeze these separately so we can grab them out of the freezer for breakfast? In individual ziplock bags or multiple muffins in a gallon ziplock bag separated with parchment paper.
Thank you

We haven’t tried making these with almond flour! Please let us know if you try it! As far as freezing the muffins, we like to put them on a tray and freeze them until solid- then we put them all in a large gallon size ziplock bag. 🙂