Banana Chocolate Chip Blender Muffins

You read that title right - blender muffins.  Absorb that for a sec....

I think I need to just bow out while I'm ahead with this one - I will never try another muffin recipe again.  My children have declared these to be the best muffins they've ever had.  And if you knew my kids, you'd know that they are pretty tough little food critics (my fault, I'm sure). 

I've made a couple batches of these over the last week, and they are inhaling them as fast as I can bake them. But it's totally ok, because these are super easy to make, and relatively healthy (as far as things containing chocolate chips go), and fast! We're talking from starting mixing, to in the oven, in like 5 minutes. 

They are fast to make because they are mostly made in the blender!

I know it's an unconventional way to make this type of recipe, but it totally works.  I love baking stuff like this for my kids, but all the steps and multiple bowls, and waiting for butter to come to room temperature so you can slowly cream it with sugar.... it was kiiillllling me. I had to find an easier way. I am an instant gratification kind of cook.  I like to whip it out and move on to the next thing. So this is just my type of recipe. 

Also the amount of sugar in so many recipes is just crazy! We're not making cake folks, we're making muffins.  If I'm going to put 2 cups of white sugar in something, then let's just be honest and call it cake. I love cake, but I'm not feeding it to my kids every day.  With super sweet ripe bananas and some honey, all that sugar is just not necessary. 

I think these work best as mini muffins, they are just a perfect two bite size, for a little sweet treat or snack. But full size muffins work great too. The whole wheat flour makes them feel really filling, and the little bit of yogurt adds moisture and just a hint of tang that balances out the sweetness really nicely.  You can swap out sour cream if you don't have yogurt.  Or add more banana. 

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour

• 3 very ripe bananas

• 1/2 cup honey

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

• 1/4 cup plain yogurt (I use whole milk Greek yogurt)

• 1 egg

• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350, or 300 convection. Grease muffin pans (we prefer mini muffin pans), or if you are using paper or silicone liners then just set them out. 

• In the container of your high powered blender, put bananas (broken into a couple of pieces), cold butter (cut up a little), honey, yogurt, vanilla, and egg.

• Start out pulsing the blender to get it started. Stop and push the contents down if you need to. Pulse some more. Once the butter is starting to break up and the ingredients blend together, turn it up gradually. Blend just until everything is well mixed.

• In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and chocolate chips.

• Pour the wet mixture over the dry and fold together gently just until all the flour is moistened.

Note: if you don't have a high powered blender, you can still make these! You'll just do it the old school way - let the butter soften, cream together with the honey, mix in the other wet ingredients (including mashed bananas), and then mix with the dry ingredients.  They will still taste awesome, it will just take a little longer. So get yourself a blender, ok? 

For mini muffins, I like to use a small cookie scoop to fill the muffin cups.  I get the perfect amount every time and all the muffins end up evenly sized with no overflow.

Bake: 20 minutes for mini muffins.  30-40 minutes for regular muffins (depends on how big your cups are and how full you fill them). 1 hour for a loaf of bread. 

If you're of the banana nut persuasion, you could totally add some chopped nuts to these.  We just don't believe in mixing our nuts with our baked goods in this house. ;-) 

Also, a hint:  this recipe totally works with other mashed/pureed fruits too. I'm working an upcoming post about that, with a master quick bread recipe.  But if you can't wait - just use this recipe, and swap out the bananas for any other pureed fruit, just make sure that it adds up to no more than 1 1/4 cups of puree, less if you're using something super wet (like apples). Leave out the chocolate chips and add nuts or raisins, and add a little spice.

Just a few ideas:

• pumpkin muffins: pureed pumpkin, swap maple syrup for the honey, and add 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

• apple pie muffins: puree a couple of tart apples, and add 2 teaspoons cinnamon

• carrot muffin: puree a couple of carrots & a zucchini, and add 1 teaspoon cinnamon

• try other combinations - banana + zucchini, pear + carrot, apple + carrot

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