Healthified Banana Muffins

I'm such a sweetaholic, so I'll admit, I'm usually a bit apprehensive when I see "healthy" recipes, particularly sweets, because I just don't expect them to taste as good as the full fat/sugar ones. That being said, I will try anything once. These banana muffins however, will be made again and again. 

fat free milk + egg whites + greek yogurt + stevia > whole milk + eggs + butter + sugar

That's the trade off, folks. In this case, the > symbol means "healthier than" and actually should have a line under it so it can double as also mean "better or equal tasting to" too.

I made a couple substitutions to this recipe from Good Karma Eats.

Healthified Banana Muffins

1/3 + 1 1/2 Tablespoons Truvia (no-calorie sweetener extracted from the stevia plant)
1/4 cup butter
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/4 cup skim milk
1/4 cup plain greek yogurt
2 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare pan or muffin tin as preferred. Mix butter and sugar on medium speed until combined. Add milk, yogurt, egg whites and vanilla, mixing until combined. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Then, add dry ingredients to the main bowl and mix until just combined. Fill muffin tin 3/4 full. Bake for 22 minutes or until golden brown on top. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack for at least 10 minutes.

Eating these warm for breakfast or a little snack is just perfect.

If you're feeling a bit more sinful, try this banana bread with frosting. To. Die. For.


This post is linked up to some of the parties listed under my Show & Tell tab at the top of the page.

Salted Caramel Banana Muffins

Salted caramel anything, I'll eat it. My favorite drink at Starbucks is a salted caramel hot chocolate. I love salted caramel chocolate. I would try salted caramel cockroaches. Okay, maybe not quite cockroaches. But, salted caramel gets me almost every time, which is why I just had to make these salted caramel banana muffins I pinned after my Grammy gave me some bananas gone brown.

I'll cut to the chase.

Salted Caramel Banana Muffins 12 muffins
from Add A Pinch
2 cups flour (I used all-purpose)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 bananas, overly ripe
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup walnuts (optional)
5 ounces caramel candies
1 Tablespoon heavy cream
sea salt, sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 and prep muffin tin with liners or lightly buttered.

Sift dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) into a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, cream bananas and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time until creamy. Then, add melted butter, mixing until well combined. Finally, add vanilla.

Add dry ingredients in slowly, until just combined. Add walnuts if desired. Be very careful not to over mix or your muffins will be dry.

Divide batter among muffin cups. I filled my muffins cups nearly full because that was how much batter there was, which worked out perfectly because when you add the caramel on top, they do not rise very much.

Prepare the caramel by melting the caramels and heavy cream in a microwave safe bowl, until caramels just begin to melt. Remove from microwave and stir until smooth. Add sprinkling of sea salt and stir.

Spoon 1 teaspoon or a little more onto the top center of each cup. It's okay if it doesn't stay perfectly in the middle. The original recipe says to make a little indentation with the back of the spoon in the center of each cup to fill with caramel. I think my batter was a little thinner than hers because it wouldn't hold the indentations. Turns out, it doesn't matter because it works just fine to make a blob on top of the batter.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven  and allow to cool for at least 3 minutes before removing from pan. Make sure you wait longer than you think before biting into one of these as the caramel in the middle can burn your tongue. Or lip. Or roof of mouth. Not that I have had that experience or anything like that.

The caramel glazes over the top as you can see above, and then forms this wonderful little pocket in the middle of the muffin. Mmmmm mmm.

Oh salted caramel, you are so right. My super talented friend Michelle shares my affinity for salted caramel. In fact, neither of us being coffee people - gasp! I know - she is the one who turned me on to the salted caramel hot chocolates from Starbucks. She has a couple delicious salted caramel recipes on her blog you'll want to try if you love salted caramel like us: Salted Caramel Popcorn or Salted Caramel Chocolate Pie or Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies. Those recipes are probably more reliable than my silly attempt at Salted Caramel Fudge this past winter. Oye.

I sure hope it's not too long until we meet again salted caramel...


This post is linked up to some of the parties listed under my Show & Tell tab at the top of the page.

Super Tasty Banana {Chocolate Chip!} Muffins

Yet again, the brown bananas strike our fruit bowl, just like a couple week's ago when I ended up making these incredible Monkey Squares. We don't seem to be eating our bananas quick enough, which is understandable since we have so many fresh raspberries, blueberries and strawberries during theses summer months. Nevertheless, I had to try a new banana bread recipe. I branched out and used a recipe not from my favorite food blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything.

I tried Jamilynn's recipe from I {Heart} Naptime. I did alter it slightly because of the ingredients I had, or actually, didn't have on hand. Here's my slightly altered version, which actually is a smidgen less fattening for you, since I was short a 1/3 cup of sour cream. I added another 1/3 cup mashed bananas to keep the bread moist. The muffins are very tasty!

Ingredients

1 stick butter                              

1/3 c sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2/3 c sour cream

2 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/3 c mashed bananas

1 c milk chocolate chips

1/2 c chopped pecans (optional)

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, vanilla and sour cream. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in separate bowl. Slowly add to sugar mixture. Fold in bananas, nuts, and chocolate chips.  Pour into 2 loaf pans or 2 muffin pans. It makes enough batter to make 10 jumbo muffins, which is what I made. Bake at 325 for 1 hour in a loaf pan or 25 min in a muffin pan. I ended up making almost all off them without chocolate chip, but added a few chips into a couple for my niece.

Check out her recipe for a super yummy sounding topping that I didn't try, only because I really don't need the extra calories right now. Hopefully next time I will indulge!

Must Make Banana Bread

You've had the thought. The one that says don't throw those far-beyond-ripe bananas away, make banana bread with them. I can still remember when my mom informed me that the brown bananas I would never dare eat, let alone touch, were the perfect kind to make banana bread. 

We had some of those brown 'naners in our fruit bowl that needed used ASAP, so I tried a new recipe and let me tell you, it is to die for.

Monkey Squares
by TheWelcomeMat via The Girl Who Ate Everything

1 ½ cups sugar

1 cup sour cream
½ cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 ¾ cups (3 or 4) ripe bananas, mashed
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt
½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour 10x15 jelly roll pan. Beat first four ingredients until creamy. Blend in bananas and vanilla one minute. Add dry ingredients and blend one minute. Stir in nuts and spread in pan. Bake 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown. Cool and frost with Browned Butter Frosting (recipe below).

Banana bread option: Instead of spreading into jelly roll pan, this recipe will make about two regular loaves of banana bread, or about four small loaves. Regular loaves bake about 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Small loaves will bake about 25 minutes on 350.

Browned Butter Frosting

½ cup butter
4 cups powdered sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
about 3 tablespoons milk or half and half

Heat butter in saucepan over medium heat past the melting point until it boiling, and a delicate brown. Remove from the heat and immediately add the remaining ingredients. This should be thicker than a glaze and thinner than frosting. Using a spatula smooth over the top of the Monkey Squares immediately. The frosting will be easier to spread once it's on the warm bread.

Super moist bread and a frosting I had never made before: Brown Butter Frosting. Mmmm-m. I wish you could taste this combination via the picture. I'm not joking. See, my niece Addison, had to get every last bit from the frosting bowl.

With the frosting, it is really more like cake, or as the recipe calls them: Monkey Squares. If you're a regular reader, it's no surprise, this is yet another recipe from my favorite food blogger Christy, also known as The Girl Who Ate Everything. It's not her original recipe, but after tasting these, I know why they are a family favorite at her house. All it took was one taste and I was sold. Try it!