Name: Low Fat Banana Oatmeal Muffins
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 cup old fashion oatmeal; 1 cup whole wheat flour; 1/2 cup wheat bran; 1/3 cup honey; 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp baking soda; 1/2 tsp cinnamon; 1/2 tsp vanilla extract; 1/4 tsp baking powder; 2 cup over ripe and mashed bananas; 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil; 2 large eggs

Moist and delicious and less than 2.5-grams of fat per serving, these low fat banana oatmeal muffins are baked with honey and can jump start anyone’s day.

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the deal. I almost never miss my morning breakfast, even if it is just a protein bar. Dinner I can skip. If I eat a big enough breakfast, I can miss lunch. But without that first morning meal, I cannot focus or start my day off right.

Eating something healthy the first thing in the morning can be difficult. I don’t always have time to make myself an omelette or hard boiled egg, so having something on hand to grab and go helps me during those busy mornings. They also help on those lazy mornings, too!

I often make whole wheat banana nut bread, but this time I wanted to add more nutritional punch. And that’s how I developed these banana oatmeal muffins.

Baking with whole wheat flour

I have been baking with whole wheat flour for over 15 years. It started as an experiment and has now become second nature to me. If you are new to baking with whole wheat flour, you can start by swapping out half of the regular flour in a recipe with whole grain flour. Easy peasy.

Whole wheat flour requires a bit more moisture than regular flour, so you shouldn’t swap out all of the regular flour for whole wheat without adding a little more moisture. This recipe for banana muffins includes not only whole wheat flour, but also wheat bran and oatmeal. Lots of whole grain goodness, energy and fiber.

Baking with honey

I love honey, in its raw form drizzled on buttered bread or even baking with it. Honey also has an infinite shelf-life. Just because the forgotten honey in the cupboard has crystalized, it is still edible. You just need to melt it to bring it back to liquid form.

Honey is a humectant and keeps your baked goods moist, but it also reduces sourness and bitterness. Did you know you can easily swap out regular granulated sugar in a recipe and bake with honey instead? Just follow this simple rule, thanks to the National Honey Board.

For every cup of honey you add to replace a cup of sugar, reduce the liquid in your recipe by 1/4 cup, add 1/2 tsp baking soda (to neutralize the acid in honey) and reduce the baking temperature by 25ºF.

I use this formula all the time when modifying recipes to bake with honey. It really does work.

These banana oatmeal muffins are mildly sweet, using only 1/3 cup honey for 12 muffins. This recipe also includes 2 cups of mashed bananas, which not only adds more natural sweetness, but also tremendous banana flavor.

Final thoughts on banana oatmeal muffins

Each one of these muffins has only 2-grams of fat, 135 calories, 4g protein and 3 grams of fiber. You can add more nutritional punch by mixing in chopped nuts like walnuts, pecans or almonds. You can also mix in raisins or dried cranberries, too.

For the mashed bananas I use in all of my baking, I store old bananas in my freezer. Our family fruit bowl is always full and sits on our kitchen counter. Some weeks we eat a lot of bananas, and some weeks we don’t. No banana gets thrown out.

When they get super ripe and I know we aren’t going to use them right away, I place them in freezer. For baking, I simply take out 2 or 3 for 1-cup of banana mush, and let it thaw on the counter. If I’m in a rush, I nuke it in the microwave for 20-seconds or until the peel easily comes off and squeeze out the banana goodness into a bowl or measuring cup.

Yield: 12 muffins