a touch of sweet

Don’t be fooled by the title of the recipe – these banana bran muffins aren’t dry or taste “healthy” like the cardboard bran muffins you buy in a coffee shop when you’re trying to be good and then end up disappointed.  They pack full banana flavour, are very tender and moist, and some of them even have a special centre.  Yes that’s right – pie pie and I decided it might be fun to put a small teaspoon of nutella in the centre of a few of the muffins…… just to see how it turned out…. of course it turned out! They were delicious!  Even without the nutella, these muffins are a hit and the boss (below) polished off a whole one on her own.  We brought some over to a friend’s house for a playdate and they were well received!  With the natural and relatively healthy ingredients that go into this muffin, you’ll feel good feeding them to your family.

one of the boss’ favourites

prep: 10 min    bake:  15-18 min     yield: 12 muffins

what you need:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup bran
• 1/2 cup organic coconut sugar (use brown sugar if you don’t have coconut sugar)
• 1 egg
• 3 large bananas (very ripe)
• 1/2 cup light tasting vegetable oil (such as grape seed oil)
• 100 g vanilla yogurt (1 single container)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• nutella *optional*

what to do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. (I don’t actually preheat my oven until I’m filling the muffin cups with the batter, simply because my oven heats up so fast! No point in wasting gas… But every baking recipe out there says preheat oven first…must be one of those standards or because ovens used to take longer to heat up!)
2. Line a muffin tin with muffin cups.
3. In a bowl, combine flour, bran, salt and baking soda.
4. In a large bowl, mash bananas until very mushy or use a mixer and beat for about 1 min.
5. Add sugar and beat/whisk until slightly fluffy.
6. Add egg and vanilla. Mix well.
7. Add the dry ingredients – do not over mix – just until flour is evenly distributed (lumpy batter is ok!).  Over mixing will make tough dense muffins. Fold in the yogurt.
   

   pie pie scooping out her favourite yogurt

8. Fill your muffin cups about 3/4. If you are doing the nutella centre – fill just a little bit at the bottom, put a small teaspoon of nutella into the centre, then top with more batter.
   

   different cups to mark nutella versus plain

   

   muffins ready to bake! 

9. Bake for about 15-18 minutes –
   

   pie pie patiently waits

   I know it sounds funny with such a wide range for time but we recently moved and I find my new oven to cook much faster sometimes…apparently it has more BTUs than our last gas stove. Anyways, I have burnt a batch of cookies and it was not fun! So definitely always check at the earlier time!  Muffins are ready when a toothpick comes out with just a tiny bit of crumbs stuck to it (if it comes out super clean it’s overdone!) – remember, while they cool they still continue to cook in the muffin tin until you remove and place onto cooling rack.

10. Remove from oven and remove from muffin tin when cool enough to handle (I usually can’t wait and gingerly lift them out with 2 forks and get them onto a cooling rack asap!).  Enjoy!
    

    a nutella surprise centre