Banana Muffin Makeover

I love to bake and my kids love to eat baked goods.  They’re so used to bursting through the door after school to the smell of something incredible that the disappointment on their faces when I go for a few days without baking something succeeds in making me feel super guilty.  Baking is probably the one way I live up to the stay-at-home-mom stereotype, and I don’t mind it at all.  See, I really like to eat those baked goods too!

One of our favorite snacks is banana bread.  My kids will eat it for breakfast, take it to school for school snack, and then ask for a slice when they get home from school.  A loaf of banana bread barely lasts 48 hours in this house!  Seeing the fruits of my efforts disappear so quickly inspired me to start making muffins instead of loaves and freezing half the muffins as soon as they cool.  This way, I can parcel them out in moderation and they last quite a bit longer.

When I switched over to cooking with healthier ingredients according to the real food rules, I knew if I changed our beloved banana muffin recipe too much, there would be mutiny.  My favorite banana bread/muffin recipe calls for white flour, sugar, and brown sugar.  It also calls for a stick of butter, which is a real food that I am trying to use with better moderation.  To give our banana muffins a real food makeover, I swapped out the refined ingredients for their natural, whole counterparts.

First, the all purpose flour had to go.  Instead, I use White Whole Wheat which is easy to find at our local grocery store.  You could probably also find it at a natural or health food store and if that fails, you can order it online.  It’s just as nutritious as regular whole wheat, but lighter in color and texture.

Next, the sugar had to be addressed.  I left out both the white and brown sugar and opted for honey instead.  Honey is much more expensive than sugar, so instead of making a full two dozen muffins and using a cup of honey, I scaled the recipe down and used half a cup.  I expected the muffins to be less sweet than we were used to, but they still taste decadent!  As for the butter, I decided to try using coconut oil instead.  It is my new favorite oil to bake with (and put on popcorn).  If you don’t have coconut oil, you can use melted butter or olive oil, but I’m not sure how the olive oil would affect the taste.  Coconut oil does not give baked goods a coconut flavor.

Finally, I threw in a tablespoon of chia seeds just because I have them around.  I got them in bulk from a natural foods store, but if you don’t have any just leave them out.  You could use wheat germ instead, if you happen to have that on hand!

Once I finished doctoring up this recipe, I got to mixing, all the time hoping my changes wouldn’t be too drastic for my kids’ spoiled little tastebuds.  The finished batter looked pretty darn good, so I was hopeful as I got the muffins ready to put into the oven.

And when you look at the muffin tin, let’s pretend it’s shiny and pretty.

They took a bit longer to bake than I expected, a little over 20 minutes.  Maybe that’s because I filled the muffin cups a bit too much.  Regardless, these babies looked fantastic when they came out of the oven.  For the sake of photographic integrity, I had to bite into one while it was still warm and, oh my, I don’t think anyone will miss my old recipe.

Mmm mmm mmm!  Against all odds, I actually managed to make my banana muffins taste even richer!  They are still quite sweet, moist, and full of flavor.  In fact, next time I made these I will probably reduce the honey a bit.

Here’s the recipe.  I hope you’ll try it out and let me know what you think!  As written, this recipe makes 12 muffins, but you could easily double it.

Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

1 3/4 cups white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon chia seeds (optional)
1/3 cup coconut oil, melted
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
3 large ripe bananas

1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup hot water

1.  Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Lightly grease muffin tin or line with paper liners.

2.  In a medium bowl, combine dry ingredients and set aside.

3.  Using a mixer, combine oil and honey and beat well.  Beat in the eggs.

4.  Slice the bananas and add to honey mixture.  Beat until bananas are mashed into mixture.  Or, you can mash the bananas before adding to the mixing bowl.  Mix in vanilla.

5.  Mix hot water into banana mixture, then stir in dry ingredients just until combined.

6.  If you forgot to preheat the oven, go ahead and do it now.

7.  Fill muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool in pan for 5 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

To freeze muffins, wrap them individually then place in a freezer bag.  Defrost in the microwave or at room temperature.

Enjoy!

What does “making it real” even mean?

A couple of months ago, someone in my Facebook news feed posted a link to a website called 100 Days of Real Food.  A few clicks later, I was inspired to give my family’s diet a makeover by eliminating processed foods and foods containing refined and artificial ingredients.  This meant replacing the flour in our baked goods with whole wheat, using honey or maple syrup in place of refined sugars, and weeding out almost all of the things we used to eat for breakfast and snacks.

Oh, the drama!  You’d have thought not being able to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning or  toast up a frozen waffle meant the end of the world.  At first, breakfast and snacks were met with cries of, “Is this whole grain?!?!”  “Are you saying we can NEVER eat Ritz crackers again!?”  Fortunately, they have nearly adjusted and don’t complain as often about the lack of lunch meat, absence of prepackaged snack foods, or homemade whole wheat pancakes.

Not that there weren’t some bumps along the way.  My first attempt at making corn muffins with whole grain, real ingredients was met with a chorus of brutally honest yucks.  And the kids were right, those muffins were not so palatable.  Ditto my first (and second and third) attempt at whole wheat sandwich bread, my first round of breakfast smoothies, and a few other experiments I can’t bring myself to mention.  It’s no wonder my kids were scared — they were used to coming home from school to the smell of freshly baked cookies and loaves of rich banana bread.  Weekends were marked by stacks of buttermilk pancakes and, dare I admit it, my kids ate the school lunch almost every single day.

After some early learning experiences, I decided to try adapting my favorite recipes to fit into the real food lifestyle rather than turning to entirely new recipes.  This gave me the idea of starting a blog to document and share what works and what doesn’t.

If you’re looking for information on why and how to make the change to a real food diet, I’d encourage you to start at 100 Days of Real Food.  They are really the experts when it comes to facts and data and their website is an amazing resource for anyone looking to make changes toward healthier eating habits!