Healthy-ish Banana Muffins

Let me introduce you to a healthy-ish banana muffin I made a few days ago!  My favorite recipe is one my mom made for us when we were growing up.  I took that recipe and made a few adjustments.  It has quite a bit of sugar in the recipe (1 1/4 C) so I decided to replace half of the sugar with honey.  I thought while I was making substitutions, I'd take the butter out too and replace it with no sugar added applesauce.  As I was wrapping up throwing in ingredients, I decided to add a little cinnamon because it's my favorite spice and I like cinnamon in everything (and because I'm not a huge honey fan and I thought it may tame that taste)!  They are perfect once they have cooled a few minutes out of the oven.  Allie called them cinnamon and sugar muffins.  The cinnamon is very mild, but gives it a little something extra.  They get a little more sticky as the day goes on, but my kids snacked on them all day, and they were all gone by dinner time. 

Adapted from my mom's recipe.

Yields 40 mini muffins.

 

Ingredients: 

• 1/2 C sugar (heaping)
• 1/2 C honey
• 1/4 C no-sugar-added applesauce
• 1 egg
• 2 ripe bananas
• 1/2 C whole milk
• 3 C flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• *Optional* chopped pecans or walnuts or chocolate chips

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350* and grease mini muffin pan.  Set aside.
• In a mixer, add sugar, honey, applesauce, and egg.  Mix until combined.
• Add peeled bananas and milk.  Mix again.
• Add in all the dry ingredients and mix well.  
• Add any optional ingredients.
• Scoop into mini muffin cups and bake for 13-15 mins.  They are done when the tops spring back when touched
• Cool then serve.

                 

I made a plain muffin and a walnut muffin.  Both were delicious!

My batter looked shiny and a bit more runny than usual so I was anxious to see how they baked.

They were the perfect size with the perfect dome top.

Breakfast is served!  I made fruit smoothies to go with our muffins.

(Fruit smoothies were made with:  1 C vanilla yogurt, 1 banana, 1 C frozen fruit {pineapple and strawberries}, 1/2 C OJ)