Banana Oat Muffins

Moist and delicious and less than 2.5-grams of fat per serving, these banana oat muffins are low fat, 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.

See my Banana Oat Muffin Web Story for a quick visual guide to making this recipe.

Why this recipe is so awesome

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.

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 ¼ cup, add ½ teaspoon 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 ⅓ 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.

Ingredients you need

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• Old fashion oatmeal: Use the old fashion whole rolled oats, not the quick cooking oats.
• Whole wheat flour: I use whole wheat flour and not all purpose flour.
• Wheat bran: This is bigger and looks like brown flakes. Wheat bran is full of fiber and has some nut undertones, in terms of flavor.
• Honey: Instead of granulated or brown sugar, I sweetened these muffins with honey.
• Over ripe and mashed bananas: I like to freeze my old bananas until I am ready to use them. This helps sweeten them and gets them extra mushy and soft once thawed.
• Extra virgin olive oil: If you’ve read my blog before, then you learned your lesson on how to bake with olive oil. Your baked goods are only as good as the ingredients you put into it. Choose a mild tasting olive oil for this cake recipe, not a peppery one.
• Eggs: Large eggs are the staples in baking.
• Pantry staples: Baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract, ground cinnamon and salt.

Step-by-step directions

1. In a medium sized bowl whisk together oatmeal, flour, wheat bran, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together olive oil, honey and vanilla. Stir in mashed bananas with the oil mixture. Mix in eggs into oil mixture.

3. Add dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until combined.

4. Divide batter evenly into a muffin pan with paper liners and bake at 350ºF for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean.

5. Let the muffins rest in the pan for 5 minutes then remove from pan and place onto a cooling rack to cool.

Expert tips and recipe FAQs

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.

PS If you try this recipe, why not leave a star rating in the recipe card right below and/or a review in the comment section further down the page? I always appreciate your feedback.

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