Banana Nut Bread [muffins]

This is definitely a kitchen staple in our home. Why? Well, because bananas are always on hand.

And because I can make these ahead on a Friday for a Saturday morning breakfast.

And because they make SUPER tasty snacks!

And because the way I make ‘em is pretty good for you, too. Ye shall see.

Let’s get our mess together and bake!

Ingredients include:

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1 1/2 cups flaxseed

1 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. sea salt

3 large (hopefully fresh) eggs

1 cup good raw honey

1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup vegetable oil (such as canola or even coconut oil)

2 heaping tbsp. pure vanilla extract

3 really ripe bananas

1 cup unsweetened shredded fresh coconut (or unsulphured dried coconut)

1 cup walnuts

1/2 cup buttermilk

unsalted butter stick (or empty wrappers)

Begin by taking your unsalted butter and greasing up the pans. You definitely want to be efficient at this part of the task! When done properly (and you will know if it’s been done properly by how messy your fingers are! ), it will cause your muffins to literally fall right out of their pans. You COULD use that spray on stuff, but I just don’t get on board with seemingly-unnatural stuff like that. I just don’t know what all I’m breathing in when I spray that stuff and it always choked me, so I personally don’t use it. It’s really quite fun to use butter and you will develop your own technique for getting  this part done.

Or you could get your kids to do this part. They LOVE it, too. My oldest son is 8 years old, and he’s the world’s best at buttering up pans. Seriously. He’s better than me. Anyway, do you know how lots of women make banana nut bread in a LOAF form? I used to do that, too, but noticed that it was taking at least an hour for the bread to cook up. I tend to be an impatient kinda momma at times (yeah, not necessarily a trait to brag about), and so I decided to just start making muffins out of them so I could cut the baking time in HALF! Yahoo!

So for this recipe, I use regular size muffin pans (not the minis) and I always need one that makes 12 and another one that makes less – just 6. So grease ‘em up! Be sure and grease the tops of the muffin pan around the edges of the cup openings. If you don’t, then when your muffins rise up and come over the sides of their lil’ homes, then they will stick to the tops and you will be aggravated with trying to remove them. So spare yourself that and the heartache of ugly muffins and grease the tops, too.

Separate your ingredients on the counter – wet and dry.

In a large bowl, add in your flour, flaxseed, baking soda, salt and coconut. Mix it all up.

Make a well in the center and add in: the eggs, oil, honey, vanilla and buttermilk. With your spoon, begin mixing around just the wet mixture, focusing on getting the eggs incorporated. Then begin mixing the wet mixture into the dry mixture. Do this just until it is all mixed together.

Now for the stars of the show! Here’s a good idea: don’t use your solid yellow bananas and CERTAINLY don’t use the ones tinged with green! BLECH! For this mug, you are definitely going to need your “old” bananas. Why? Because as bananas age, their natural sugars develop as brown spots and spats on their peels. These are PERFECT for banana nut muffins because they have natural sweetness already built in. Use ‘em up! Now…if someone you know tries to give you BLACK bananas for your muffins, just toss those into your compost pile because they are already rotting. Brown spots = tasty natural sweetness; Black = skanky bananas. Go for the brownish-yellow, people!

In a separate small bowl, mash up your really ripe bananas supa fast.

If you have one of these pastry blenders, it will cause this part of the recipe to go about 85% faster. So get one!

Then add the mashed bananas to the batter mix.

Now roughly chop up the walnuts and add those in. Stir the whole thing together real quick.

Begin filling up your muffin pans. You’re going to want to fill them completely full, even slightly OVER filled. Don’t worry – that batter is not going anywhere. It is really thick! Also note: say you are using two 12-muffin pans and don’t have enough batter to fill up the extra spaces…No worries! Simply fill those 6 remaining spaces up with water. If you don’t, then they might burn! (Trust me, I have had that happen before!)

Pop them in your preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. Check them at 20 minutes with a cake tester or toothpick. The biggest muffin should be tested, and when you pull out the tester/toothpick, you will know it’s done if it comes out clean.

Because you buttered the pans so well, then the muffins are going to lovingly pop out of the pans in this next step. Just take a wire rack and place it upside down on your muffins in the pan, and then flip the whole ensemble over and hear them sing for glory at their sweet and total release from the pan!

If possible, allow them to cool on the wire racks for 10-15 minutes…but your kiddos may be trying to snatch them up before that point!

These will keep tastily and happily well in a tight fitting glass display such as you see here for at least one week (they’ve never lasted longer than that here because everyone eats ‘em up!). Or you can pop them in the freezer for 2 or 3 months if you need them to last longer.

ENJOY!