a school safe twist to banana nut muffins

Since pie pie started kindergarten, I’ve been tweaking my baking a bit to accommodate school safe snacks.  Sometimes for banana bread, muffins, or even cookies, I like to add ground up nuts into the batter for extra nuttiness and nutrition, but today I used seeds instead and made it into a crumble.  I am really pleased with how they turned out!  The crumble adds texture to the muffin and also makes them look really pretty.

fresh out of the oven

prep: 15 min    bake: 15 min    yield: 12 regular muffins

what you need:

crumble:

• 1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
• 1/3 cup sunflower seeds
• 1 heaping tbsp flax seeds
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 3 tbsp brown sugar

muffins:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup greek yogurt, plain
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3 large bananas
• 1/4 cup sugar (you can use white, brown, or coconut sugar)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

what to do:

1. Line a muffin tray with muffin cups, preheat oven to 350 F (or 325 F for convection).
2. In a food processor or powerful blender (I used my Ninja), chop up seeds (not too fine). Place them into a bowl and add cinnamon and butter, mashing the butter with the ground seeds to evenly distribute. It should be mealy (sort of looks like partly wet sand).
3. In a large bowl, beat bananas and sugar together, then add in vanilla, egg and butter (it is easier to incorporate if you melt the butter slightly).
4. In a separate bowl, measure and mix together your oats, flour, salt, and baking soda.
5. Add dry ingredients to banana mixture, mix just until they come together – do not over mix or you will have tough dense muffins!
6. Fold in greek yogurt.
7. Scoop to fill your muffin cups, then top generously with crumble (about 1 heaping tbsp each muffin).
   

   ready for the oven

8. Bake for 15 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean and tops are golden brown. If the toothpick comes out clean but the tops are not browned yet, switch your oven to broil just for 30 seconds – 1 minute to brown the tops.
9. Remove from oven and when cool enough to handle, remove from muffin tins and onto cooling rack to cool completely.
10. ENJOY!

boss, my little helper