As a child there were a few things I really loved – Tudor pickled onion crisps, boiled butter ball sweets and milk lollies. If I had any one of these I was a very happy chappie. Our local sweet shop was called ‘Pats’ (it’s still there 30 years later) and they had the best penny mix-up counter ever. It was glass covered and you asked Pat for whatever you wanted. A 10p mix-up got you easily 15 small sweets. One of them was a foam banana. Foam bananas were 2p – not cheap compared to Mojos which were two for 1p. Pat put a foam banana in my mix up. How exciting….we walked home eating our sweets. I decided to try the foam banana first which in hindsight was a good decision as I still had the rest of my sweets to go as it was the single most disgusting food I’ve eaten. Banana? It was like banana poison. The texture was chewy and rubbery. The fake banana flavour takes some beating in terms of ‘fake’.
After this terrible banana flavouring experience I never really warmed to banana flavoured food. Kids ate banana flavoured custard and I’d rather eat my hat. I like real bananas. I like real banana flavour. That’s why I really like these muffins. They are moist, flavourful and extremely healthy. And nothing remotely fake about them.
Note: The bananas are best when they are very over ripe – in fact the blacker the better. They contain more sugar than unripe bananas and work really well in this recipe. Never throw over ripe bananas away again!
Oaty Banana Muffins
200g plain flour
100g oats (I use large porridge oats)
2.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
100g brown sugar (I use 50g Demerara and 50g dark brown sugar for a toffee flavour)
4 very ripe bananas
1 large egg
60g melted butter (or you can used 60g coconut oil or light olive oil)
2tbsp milled flaxseed (optional but increases the nutritional content)
2 tbsp mixed seeds (such as poppy, pumpkin, sesame and sunflower seeds)
1 tsp cinnamon
Preheat your oven to 180 oC / Gas 4. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases. In a large bowl mix the flour, oats, sugar, flaxseed, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and seeds. In another bowl mash the bananas and mix in the beaten egg and the melted butter. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones. Mix together lightly taking care to not overmix. Spoon into the paper cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for 5 minutes before devouring. This makes 12 muffins.
You can change this recipe to suit your tastes – add walnuts or dried cranberries or dark chocolate chips, leave out the sugar and add cheese, oregano and some sunblush tomatoes for a pizza style muffin.
This is a great recipe for kids just home from school needing a wee energy boost or a healthy addition to your morning elevenses.
Let me know what you think and how you got on baking your muffins.
2 thoughts on “Old bananas? Try my Oaty Banana Muffin recipe and you’ll never throw an over ripe banana away again!”
LYNDA
Well I may have to adjust my own banana muffin recipe – oats and seeds in sounds great 🙂 I replace the sugar with grated apple and raisins.yum.
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kgibbers
That’s sounds lovely – the sugar always bothered me a bit and wasn’t sure how to reduce it. I’ll definitely try apple and raisins to sweeten them. Thanks
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