Banana Oatmeal Muffins

These have become a breakfast staple at our house. In fact, I made some two days ago and they are already gone. No wonder I feel like I'm always in the kitchen...they keep eating the food I make...what's up with that?

We have pretty much cut out cereal at our house, which was not easy. (Even the "good" cereals can still have so much extra crap in them.) We all LOVE our cereal. But we just ate through what we had and then when it was gone, it was gone. I have made some homemade granola that I will share with you at a later date, and that has helped the transition. 

The issue with breakfast is that as much as we also love eggs, we don't want to eat them everyday. There is yogurt, fruit, toast and nut butter, clean waffles (usually on the weekends). Every once in a while I will buy some Nature's Path Flaxseed toaster waffles (sounds delish, right?). They are actually pretty good, and the kids like them. But in the interest of keeping costs down, I have been making these muffins. One batch makes about 15 muffins, which usually will last us a week or so, but apparently not this week!

I found the original recipe via Pinterest. As I was looking at the ingredients, I saw it included white sugar, which we have been trying to steer clear of. I figured I could try to convert the sugar to honey but I wasn't sure how to go about it. That is territory that I want to explore, but I haven't gotten there yet. As I was scrolling through some of the comments on the page, I found this version. This lady already figured it out AND added some extra good-for-you stuff! Thanks Debbie!

I did add one extra ingredient this week. I tried adding Wheat Germ and it worked out great. I have a friend, I like to think of her as my clean-eating-guru, that told me she puts Flaxseed and Wheat Germ in everything. So going on her advice, I threw some in the muffins and they tasted exactly the same. Success!

One of the nice things about this recipe is that you just throw all the ingredients into a food processor and let it do the work for you. Sweet!

I used quick oats here because that's all I had, but the recipe calls for traditional oats. 

Blend all the ingredients and then pour into a greased muffin pan, or use muffin cups. The batter will be very thick and I usually fill each cup about 3/4 of the way. They are pretty heavy muffins since there is no flour, so you don't need them to be huge in order to fill you up. 

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown. 

Perfection.

My family likes these muffins so much that there was a bit of a muffin-melt-down this morning when Daddy took the last one for lunch... 

"Mom said those are only for breakfast!" 

Well, I said that because they disappeared so quickly since they were being eaten for breakfast, lunch, snack....late night snack...ok, that one may be my fault. Hehe. The point is, these are great for anything! Just don't blink, you might miss them!

Here's the recipe from Debbie's blog, with my one addition.

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

• 2.5 cups traditional oats
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup plain low-fat greek yogurt 
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 Tbsp ground Flaxseed
• 2 Tbsp Wheat Germ
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 ripe bananas

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

If you use traditional oats, then put those in the processor first and run it for a few seconds to chop them up a bit. 

Then put in the rest of the ingredients and blend until the mixture is smooth. The batter will be pretty thick. 

This where you can get creative. If you like chocolate chips or nuts in your muffins, then mix them into the batter.

Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 of the way.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until the top is golden brown. Or you can use the toothpick method. 

Let them cool on a wire rack and then devour. 

I hope this helps makes breakfast at your house even tastier!