Healthy Peanut Butter and Banana Muffins
I’m so excited! I’m starting to get my favorite light back. Right now, prime shooting is from ~9am-1pm. It is just gorgeous, especially with food. How I wish I could bottle it for uses at night when dinner is ready or on rainy days. *sigh* I’m learning (slowly) a bit about lighting and using my flash unit more effectively, but I have much more to learn and cannot really duplicate this light. Maybe it can’t be completely duplicated. One of these days though, I’m going to be able to get close. It just may be a few years from now :-)
You may note that the muffin above is pictured in a silicone cupcake “paper.” I *love* them. The first batch I baked in them I wasn’t sold. The instructions had said not to grease or flour them. Everything stuck leaving 1/2 a muffin or more inside. It was a pain to get them clean with all the fluting too. With this batch I used a paper towel dunked in a bit of olive oil to prep them and the muffins slipped right out; no coaxing required. They are rigid enough to stand on their own which allowed me to configure them on a baking sheet such that they would fit in our toaster/convection oven which is always a plus in our book during the summer.
My only pet peeve about them is that they were sold in a mixed color pack of baby blue and baby pink. I’d prefer something a little less “baby shower” like and more neutral, perhaps a tan like the natural cupcake papers? So far the only other sets of them I’ve seen around town are bright colors from a kindergarten classroom. Again, not what I’d like in my kitchen.
This muffin I made a while ago when I had three ripe bananas begging to be used and I was kind of tired of the usual banana bread. It was based off of one originally published in Bon Appétit some time ago that had many conflicting comments and adjustment suggestions on it. I sifted through those comments and took some of them to heart. Then I applied a few other changes to make it a bit healthier - higher fiber, healthier sweeteners, better carb-protein balance. The result was pleasantly not at all “healthy” tasting. It was a wonderful treat in the mornings and since it made more than 12 muffins worth, we put the rest into a 7″ springform and served it as cake a few evenings after dinner.
Healthy Peanut Butter and Banana Muffins
makes about 18 standard sized muffins
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 3 large)
- 1/4 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
- 1/4 cup ground flax seed (I spun mine in a blade coffee grinder)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- dash each of fresh ground nutmeg and cardamom
- 1/4 cup plain yogurt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup natural peanut butter (I used Adam’s smooth, but you can use chunky
- 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line or grease 18 standard sized muffin cups, or 12 muffin cups and one 7″ cake or springform pan.
2. In a large mixing bowl, mash bananas together with honey and brown sugar and let sit.
3. In smaller bowl combine dry ingredients, plus a dash each of nutmeg and cardamom. Mix thoroughly.
4. In the larger mixing bowl, add yogurt, oil, eggs and vanilla and beat with electric mixer until mostly smooth and nearly frothy. Add peanut butter and mix until well combined.
5. Add dry ingredients and fold together until mixed. If desired, you can add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips.
6. Bake muffins about 20 minutes or until toothpick in center comes out clean. If baking in a pan, try 25-35 minutes or so. Transfer muffins to a cooling rack and let cool completely. As with most banana bread, if you seal it in an air tight container after it has cooled the flavor will deepen over the next 12 hours or so.
The resulting muffins had a nice rise to them and did not feel at all heavy, an all too common problem in healthier muffin recipes. In fact, their crumb closely resembled that of cake so it wasn’t much of a stretch to serve it as dessert. Neither the peanut butter or the banana were quite as strong of flavors as you would expect, but those who had one seemed to enjoy them as much as I did. The yogurt definitely helped them hold their moisture and survive under a cake dome on our warm dining room table longer than I would have guessed. That was especially helpful since it is a slightly larger recipe.
Next time I will have to try freezing some to see how they do under those conditions. It would be nice for DH to be able to grab one from the freezer on the way out the door to snack on between his long block of classes that span normal lunch hours. Plus in the frozen state they’d be sure to survive the bike ride too!
I’ve got 4 ripe bananas begging to be used now. What are you favorite recipes for ripened bananas?
