Banana Oatmeal Muffins

These muffins have great banana flavor, a hint of sweet, nice bite and bake very pretty.  The girls love to eat them as a snack or for breakfast.  My favorite way is warm with a tiny bit of butter or margarine.  We "healthed" up the basic banana muffin recipe to make a more filling snack.  You could go even further and substitute 1/3 cup applesauce for the oil.  Hope you enjoy these as much as we do!

Ingredients

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 egg or 1/4 cup pasteurized egg product

3/4 cup coconut milk (almond or skim plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice would work too)

2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 medium mashed bananas, around 1 and 1/4 cups

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Combine dry ingredients flour through nutmeg and whisk together.
3. In a large bowl thoroughly mix the egg, oil, milk, vanilla and mashed bananas.  Stir the flour mixture into the banana mixture until just combined.  Do not over mix the muffins will be tough
4. Pour batter into lined or oiled muffin tins.  Fill 3/4 full.  This recipe makes 12 muffins in my square pan and enough left over batter for 10 mini muffins.  We like a light sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar on top before they bake.
5. Mini muffins bake for 10-12 minutes.  Regular muffins bake for 12-15 minutes.  These bake fast, be careful not to over bake.  Remove from pan after they have cooled for 2 minutes

Banana Muffins with Streusel Topping

You may notice allot of banana recipes on this blog.  We eat these regularly and sometimes don't eat those bananas fast enough so they become very ripe, especially with the heat wave we have been having!  Now since the girls and I enjoy baking and trying out new recipes this is rarely a problem.  A quick search and a few minutes later we are off creating some new treat.  My friend Stephanie posted a really cute picture of her girls streuseling muffins and that was the inspiration.  These are so good!  They have enough spice to make the muffin part flavorful, but the topping is really what makes you grab that second muffin.  Toasting the walnuts and eating warm out of the oven are must do steps.  You could even serve these as dessert with a scoop of ice-cream and drizzle of carmel.

Recipe Modifications

• Used pasteurized egg product
• Used salted butter, I was out of unsalted
• Used skim milk, recipe still turned out amazing
• Used 2 and a half bananas 
• Cooked recommended 25 minutes but may try 22 minutes next time.  New pan cooks fast!

Ingredients

Streusel

1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts, toasted

1/4 cup old fashioned oats

1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 tbsp. flour

1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. salt

2 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into tiny pieces

Muffin

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp.baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1/4 tsp.freshly grated nutmeg

2 medium mashed ripe bananas

1 large egg

1/2 cup half-n-half or whole milk

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Recipe

This recipe comes Genesis of a Cook blog.  The first I have tried but after this one I'll be trying more! 

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Banana Nutella Muffins

I had left over bananas and a wanted some nutella and thought wouldn't a banana nutella muffin be so good.  A quick search later and I had multiple recipes at my fingertips.  Less than an hour after that I had hot out of the oven muffins.  Don't you just love how that works!  The girls absolutely loved these and gobbled them up.  Michael is gunning for a nutella pie so he won't admit to loving anything until we make that pie ;-)  I'm now inspired to create my own banana nutella muffin that's a bit healthier so we can enjoy these all the time.  And as an added bonus I got to use my new sifter for the first time.  Prior to this I just sifted with a mesh screen used to drain fat or prevent splatters

Recipe Modifications

• Only used 1/2 teaspoon instead of 1 teaspoon nutella for center and top of muffin.
• Only used 1 cup of sugar.  In future would try to substitute 1/2 cup brown and 1/4 cup white, I love the taste of brown sugar with banana

Ingredients

2 ripe, mashed bananas

2 cups flour

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup sour cream

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup Nutella

Recipe

This recipe comes from Lets Dish Recipes a food blog I just discovered.   

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Muffin Cup Meatloaf with a Kick

Growing up I hated meatloaf.  It seems people usually either love it or hate it.  Years ago I ran across a recipe in my monthly Cooking Light magazine for mini turkey meatloaves and decided to give it another chance.  Michael is a meatloaf fan so he offered some encouragement.  The result was an amazing juicy individual meatloaf muffin with a kicked up ketchup topping.  I am now a huge meatloaf fan and we make these routinely in the cooler months.  You can make the meatloaf the night before or in the am and make a satisfying easy evening meal after a busy day. We keep it traditional with the sides, corn and mashed potatoes are a must.  And I like to throw in some wilted spinach if we have any fresh spinach because the girls love it and two veggies are better than one!

Recipe Modifications

• Added hot sauce to meat mixture, around 1 teaspoon
• Doubled the recipe
• Used extra large muffin pan, so doubled recipe made 6 meat muffins
• Used 1 teaspoon dried parsley instead of fresh
• Used 1/2 cup pasteurized eggs instead of egg whites.  These are made from 99% egg whites
• Squirted ketchup on muffins then added a dash of hotsauce to each and swirled with a spoon
• Cooked 40 minutes due to increased size of muffins instead of 30 minutes
• I have to admit that I no longer measure anything when making this recipe but I did for this meal and it turned out extra yumm!

Ingredients

Cooking Spray

1/2 cup chopped onion

3 tablespoons dried breadcrumbs

1 tablespoon fresh parsley

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

8 ounces ground turkey breast

1 large egg white

3 tablespoons ketchup divided

1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Recipe

This recipe comes from my favorite source Cooking Light. Not diet food, but food that is conscious of health without losing any flavor. Food for life! 

This recipe is not online but was originally printed in Cooking Light April 2007 under Turkey Mini Meat Loaves.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat.  Coat pan with cooking spray.  Add onion to pan and saute 5 minutes or until lightly browned.  Remove from heat and cool slightly.
3. Combine onion, breadcrumbs and next 7 ingredients (through egg white) in a large bowl.  Stire in 2 tablespoons ketchup.  Spoon about 1/2 cut meat mixture into each muffin cup coated with cooking spray; place muffin tin on baking sheet.  Combine remaining 1 tablespoon ketchup and hot pepper sauce in small bowl.  Brush ketchup mixture over meat loaf tops.  Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until a thermometer registers 165 degrees.  

Yield: 3 servings.  Serving size 1 loaf.  Calories 142 (10% from fat); Fat 1.5 g (sat 0.4g, mono 0.1g, poly 0.2g); protien 20.2 g; carb 12g; fiber 0.8g; chol 30 mg; iron 1.2mg; sodium 508mg; calc 28mg

Brown Sugar-Banana Muffins

Almost everyone who eats bananas has experienced too ripe to eat bananas.  And when this happens it's time to bake!  I took advantage of my 21 month old waking up at 5:30am this Saturday morning and made these delicious light and cakey banana muffins.  I even made a mistake missing the egg addition, which I added at the last addition of the banana mixture and these turned out so well.  If you like a less sweet muffin you could adjust the amount of brown sugar based on how ripe your bananas are.  As they ripen they become sweeter.  We will be making this recipe again and again.

Recipe Modifications

• Used 1/4 cup of milk and 3/4 teaspoon lemon juice instead of buttermilk
• Used pasteurized eggs instead of eggs

Ingredients
1/2  cup  butter, softened
1  cup  firmly packed brown sugar
2  large eggs
1  cup  mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large)
1/4  cup  buttermilk
1  teaspoon  vanilla extract
2 1/4  cups  all-purpose flour
3/4  teaspoon  baking soda
1/2  teaspoon  baking powder
1/2  teaspoon  salt
1/2  cup  toasted chopped pecans

Recipe
For this recipe I used a southern living recipe.  They do look very southern with the toasted pecans on the top!

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