Today on my blog I’m sharing one of my favorite recipes when it comes to using overripe bananas, banana chocolate chip muffins. Except for today, I’ve changed my traditional banana chocolate chip muffin recipe to a little bit healthier with some healthy alternatives to the traditional ingredients.
I wouldn’t classify myself as having a sweet tooth, however, I’ve always been a huge fan of banana bread and especially banana chocolate chip muffins. I think that muffins especially are full of flavor, comfort, and are extremely practical for on the go as a dessert, breakfast, or snack.
However, as we know- banana chocolate chip muffins aren’t the healthiest option out there. Today, I’m here to change that. Although this recipe isn’t the healthiest, you can definitely make it healthier- I think I made a pretty amazing recipe that extremely easy to follow and include a small number of ingredients located at pretty much any grocery store.
Also, this is my very first cooking/recipe video. I’m someone who loves to bake and cook and try out new recipes. I constantly update my Instagram Stories with new recipes I’m trying out so definitely make sure to be following me there if you want to see what I’m cooking and if it turns out well or not. It’s something that I’ve definitely wanted to incorporate on my blog for a while now and I’m excited to finally be starting to put this kind of content on Our Wandering Mind.
I like to think of myself as a realistic cook. I love cooking, experimenting, but I don’t like too in-depth of recipes and things that require a lot of work. I’ll put in the extra steps to make a great risotto, don’t give me wrong, but I tend to go for recipes that are easy to follow, require the least amount of ingredients possible, and look do-able. So those are exactly the type of recipes you can expect me to feature on my blog.
Now to get into the baking process. First, I start with greasing my muffin inserts on my muffin pan. I love using these silicon inserts since they’re reusable, easy to clean, and the muffins easily come out of it. Then I preheat the oven to 350 degrees F or 180 degrees C.
First the key to amazing banana muffins-healthy or not is ripe (I mean really ripe) bananas. We tend to buy bananas all the time and instead of throwing out and wasting bananas if they get super, uneatable brown, we stick them in the freezer and save them for smoothies or recipes like this one.
For this recipe, I started with four medium to large frozen bananas and left them out until they were thawed. Once thawed, I added them to a mixing bowl with some melted butter (all measurements will be listed at the bottom of the blog post!) and mashed with a fork. It’s key to use a fork when mixing and mashing this recipe because you don’t want to puree your bananas. It’s great to have some banana chunks throughout the muffins.
Next, it’s time to add the sugar, egg, and vanilla. One of the substitutes to make this banana chocolate chip muffin a little healthier- I substituted regular sugar for coconut sugar. They essentially taste the same to me, but coconut sugar is a lot lower of a glycemic index than white sugar. Glycemic index is a system that ranks carbohydrate foods on a basis of how they affect blood sugar (glucose). However, many people think that this is irrelevant and sugar is just sugar. So feel free to use just regular traditional sugar if you feel like it.
After you quickly mix those ingredients in, add the baking soda and a pinch of salt. I prefer not to add much salt, otherwise these muffins can taste pretty salty really fast. Once those ingredients are added, I added in coconut flour. Once again feel free to use traditional white flour, wheat flour, or whatever you have on hand.
Now coconut flour is known to have a lot more benefits than traditional white flour. It’s gluten-free, high in fiber, protein, and healthy fats, which make it fantastic to bake with. It’s also noted that you should use a little less coconut flour when baking as you would traditional white flour- this is something that I forgot to do when making these muffins. The reason for this is that coconut flour is much more absorbent than traditional white flour. So that’s definitely something to consider when making these muffins with coconut flour.
After that it’s time to mix in the chocolate chips. Although this recipe isn’t vegan due to the egg, I did use vegan butter, making this recipe dairy free with adding some vegan dark chocolate-chocolate chips. I found that these essentially tasted the same as traditional dark chocolate, but they’re by no means “healthy” so use whatever you have on hand. However, if you’ve never tried vegan chocolate, I highly recommend you try it out.
To finish off the batter, I added a sprinkle of cinnamon. I love the taste of cinnamon and it has many health benefits such as high source in antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, good for heart health and may help fight against various things like diabetes, cancer, infections and other viruses.
Once everything’s mixed together I spoon about a medium size scoop of batter into 12 greased muffin tins and stuck them into the oven at 350 degrees F or 180 degrees F for 18 minutes.
Once the muffins are cooked through (I stick a toothpick in the center of the muffin and if it comes out clean it’s done) and then I place them on a cooling rack. I love cooling racks because it lets the air circulate all around the food.
Once the muffins are decently cool (I let them cool for about 3-5 minutes) I sprinkled on some cinnamon sugar. Obviously, this is optional, but if you don’t mind adding a little bit of sugar to the top, I think it adds so much flavor and is the perfect topping for these muffins. I had an already made cinnamon sugar, but if you don’t have one, feel free to make your own with just adding cinnamon and the sugar of your choice in a bowl and mixing it together.
Now the muffins are good to enjoy! I love eating these fresh since they’re still a bit warm from the oven and the chocolate is still a little melted. These muffins are the perfect snack, dessert, or even if you’re running out the door, they make an extremely quick and delicious, breakfast option.
You’ll find the recipe to Pin for later down below along with the nutrition information. 601 kilojoules equal about 144 calories and you can change the macros of this easily by substituting different ingredients ie. not using coconut flour and sugar if you want to lower the fat content.
I’ve also included a screenshot of a traditional chocolate chip banana recipe so you can compare the macros! It’s shocking the difference between the two. The traditional muffins are double the number of calories of my Healthier Coconut Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins.
I hope you enjoyed my first baking/cooking blog post. I’m so excited to share more recipes that I love on my blog so make sure to subscribe to know when a new cooking blog post is up.
