Banana oatmeal muffins

My kids love to eat bananas.  The day I buy them.  Then the rest of the bunch sits on the counter until Mom puts the remainder of the now too brown to eat yellow floating fruit into the freezer.  There it sits until I have time for banana bread.  Which also ends up sliced and in the freezer.

That was so last week.  While cleaning out the freezer I found 7 bananas that had to go.  I hate throwing them in the trash, so I looked on Pinterest and found a yummy, low sugar recipe.  


Hubby and Big Girl are both pre-diabetic, so we are carefully watching sugars (natural sugar, processed sugar, carbs.....  woah!  so much to think about!)

I made the recipe as is the first time.  There was one muffin left over.  They were so good!  This morning I made two more batches, with the intent to freeze some for later. I got 12 to freeze (out of nearly 36!).  Now I am thinking that I need to go get more bananas.

I changed the recipe a bit from the original.  You may be able to see that it is a fairly forgiving recipe that can be 'enhanced' to your personal preference if you don’t like or don’t have something on hand.  Just the way that I did!  Also, there are some things that I just don't like to measure; honey and peanut butter are two of those things (no pb in this one).  I just feel like so much gets wasted on the measuring device that I just 'eye-ball it.'

When you see that the recipe calls for dried fruit, you can use most any dried fruit that you like.  I used mixed fruit with apricots, plums (aka prunes - just don't tell the kids) and apples, along with raisins, craisins and pomegranate crasins.  I used kitchen scissors to cut up the apricots, plums and apples to roughly the size of raisins. The flavors mixed very nicely.  We want to try blueberries with the apples and craisins next time.

Learn from my example:  Do not top your muffin with anything except raisins or craisins.  The other fruits will burn.  I don't know why the raisins/craisins didn't, but trust me, charred apples and apricots did not go over well.

Makes 12 -14 muffins

Ingredients:

3/4 cup dried fruit
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat germ (if you don't want to use this, just use more flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons cinnamon
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup quick oats
1/2 cup water
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
2 mashed, overly rip bananas

Toppings:

sunflower seeds
slivered almonds
raisins or craisins to top the muffins
Dry or toasted oats

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 380 - if your oven is like mine and you can't find exactly 380 (weird number, I know), then just get it close.  Line your muffin tin.

In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.  Add in brown sugar and whisk to mix the dry ingredients together.  Set aside

In a cup or small bowl, combine the oats and milk.  Set aside

In a medium/small bowl beat the egg.  Add in the oil.  Beat well.  Add in the applesauce, honey and banana.  Mix well.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into the well.  Using a rubber spatula, gold the flour into the center until all the combined with no trace of flour.

Next, fold in the oat and water mixture.  Add the dried fruit.  Fold until just mixed.  do not over mix.

Spoon the batter in to the muffin tin. Fill the liners 75-80% full.  Sprinkle some slivered almonds, sunflower seeds, raisins, craisins, or dry oats on top (or use them all!)

Bake at 380 for 10 minutes.  Then reduce the temperature to 350 for another 8-10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!