Healthy-ish banana chocolate muffins

I have been so busy with grad school I haven’t posted any recipes lately! I have made some, I need to stop slacking.

I’ve been reorganizing some of my pins over on Pinterest, and started a board for just breads & muffins. I decided that this would be a great time to make Feel Great in 8‘s “Healthy Chocolate Swirl Banana Muffins”. Muffins and baked oatmeal are great ways to grab a healthy breakfast on early days. Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days at school, so these were perfect! I’m also trying to tempt my boyfriend into eating breakfast, he has a bad habit of not eating all day until 2pm or 4pm so I was hoping these might to the trick with that too. Who can resist chocolate?!

For these, I didn’t really decide what to mess with until I started to make them. They’re pretty healthy to begin with, if you don’t mind 2-1/2 cups of wheat flour in 18-20 muffins. Personally, I wanted to cut down on the wheat. I subbed in some quinoa flour that I’ve had but haven’t had a chance to use yet. Unfortunately I did not realize that quinoa flour is a little bit bitter, similar to when you bake with stevia, so once I tasted the mixture I had to add more honey in order to make it palatable. I used eggs instead of flax eggs, and I added some cinnamon. I also threw some unsweetened organic coconut on the top of some of them, just to add a little texture.

Once I started, I realized no way was I swirling chocolate into muffins (they’re just too small and there’s too many of them!) so I decided to make them chocolate muffins instead of chocolate swirl. Make sure to visit Feel Great in 8 for the original recipe!

Healthy-ish Chocolate Muffins

1 cup quinoa flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1/4 cup plain greek yogurt
1/2 cup honey
2 whole eggs
1/3 cup unrefined coconut oil (measured after heating)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 unsweetened organic coconut (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease 2 muffin tins or add muffin cups.
Whisk together the flour, cinnamon & baking soda.
In a separate bowl, mix together mashed bananas (I cut the bananas into 2″ pieces and then used a hand mixer to
“mash”), yogurt, honey, eggs, oil, and vanilla.
Fold the banana mixture into the flour mixture until blended.
Spoon batter into each muffin cups, about 2/3 of the way full. Top with coconut if desired.
Bake until slightly brown on top and a toothpick, poked into the center, comes out clean (18-22 minutes).
Enjoy! Keep leftovers refrigerated, or freeze and microwave on busy mornings.

You can try freezing these, but they won’t last that long! I split these between me and my boyfriend yesterday, (9 for him, 11 for me) and mine are nearly gone already. They aren’t too sweet, and they’re really moist! One thing I noticed is that in the oven they rise like a cake but then they all fell a couple minutes after I took them out of the oven and they started cooling. That wasn’t really a problem.

My boyfriend does not eat clean or healthy at all and he’s also not much of an adventurous eater (although I’m pushing him on that a bit!) so I gave him one of these before I told him anything about them. I just said “eat this and tell me what you think.” He ate it and said it was good; asked if it was gingerbread (?); and remarked how moist it was and that there was a taste he couldn’t quite identify (banana). Once he knew they were healthy, he still wanted to take them home, so I count this recipe as a win!