5-ingredient Banana Bread Muffins

Name: 5-ingredient Banana Bread Muffins
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 3 bananas; 2 eggs; 1/4 cup honey; 2 cups rolled oats; 1/2 tsp baking soda; 1/2 tsp salt (optional)**; 1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)**

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Need an easy breakfast for school mornings? These super easy gluten-free banana bread muffins are so tasty and only have 5 ingredients! Whip them up in the blender and have breakfast ready for the whole week! Try my easy scrambled eggs recipe and take a peek at my list of fast and simple breakfasts.

School season is in full swing and that usually means a triple or quadruple batch of cinnamon blender oatmeal waffles or easy almond flour pancakes or oven-roasted hash browns or coconut oil and cinnamon granola on Saturday morning so that we have enough leftovers for quick breakfasts during the week.

However, sometimes I like to surprise the kids with a fresh breakfast during the week. I’ve been making peanut butter chocolate chip muffins, but I wanted to add another super quick muffin recipe to our list of quick and easy breakfasts.

I have a banana muffin recipe that contains ONLY 5 ingredients!

Reasons Why You Should Make Banana Bread Muffins

Why should you make muffins with bananas? Oh goodness… why shouldn’t you?! They are a dream come true for the busy mom trying to get real food on the table:

Make in the blender, so you’re not having to wash a bunch of dishes afterward.
Just 5 ingredients – need I say more?!
Can use green, yellow, or brown bananas – no need to shop for new, or wait for old.
Naturally sweetened – no refined sugar in sight!
Minimally sweetened (just ¼ cup for the whole batch!)
Naturally gluten-free and incredibly delicious
Easy to double or triple, based on how many muffin tins and silicone muffin cups you have
Freezer-friendly (hence the reason to double or triple!)
Minimal mess (if any), food that will do their bodies good and you avoid the mom guilt that often comes with the convenience food shortcuts.

Up close view of a hand holding a banana bread muffin with a sprinkle of rolled oats on top.

If these aren’t reasons enough, these banana bread muffins taste JUST LIKE banana bread, except in the fun and convenient and portable muffin size.

That means instead of reaching for a Pop-Tart or a store-bought granola bar when you’re already 10 minutes late getting out the door, reach for a couple of muffins from the freezer and toss them to the kids in the back seat.

Here’s What You Need

Notes on Ingredients for Banana Muffin Bread

This recipe is inspired by Pinch of Yum, but I made a few modifications based on what I normally keep in my own pantry and my own experience in baking with oat flour.

Oat Flour

Please don’t buy oat flour. Ever, ever, ever. It’s too expensive and it’s SO easy to make your own!

Take any kind of rolled oats – traditional or instant – and stick it in your blender. Give it a whiz for about a minute and BOOM… you have oat flour. If you need the official tutorial, here’s how to make oat flour.
I have a Blendtec blender similar to this one and we use it every single day… but you can use a regular blender too if that’s what you have.

There are two catches when baking with oat flour:

First, it’s naturally gluten-free so it doesn’t have the same rise factor as all-purpose or whole wheat flours. We’ll get a good rise thanks to baking soda, but just know that these muffins will be a bit denser than a traditional muffin.

I actually think that’s for the better though. These banana bread muffins feel more like a healthy, hearty breakfast that will actually hold you over until lunch, rather than some shallow, fluffy baked good that tricks you into feeling good for 5 minutes and hungry again in an hour.
Second, because oats absorb liquid really well (and really fast), you need to add them at the very, very end of the recipe. You want everything to be ready to go before you add the oats to the wet ingredients… oven pre-heated, silicone liners in the muffin tins… cookie scooper ready to portion the batter evenly into the muffin cups… all of it.

These healthy. easy, and homemade banana bread muffins are all done and the batch is in a large white bowl. They are all topped with a sprinkle of rolled oats.

Honey

The original recipe called for one cup of dates, and while I use dates for homemade pumpkin larabars and no-bake blueberry coconut pie, dates aren’t that cheap and I don’t ALWAYS have them in the pantry.

I definitely have honey in the pantry though.

We’re using honey as our sweetener, but you can use maple syrup if you’d like. Or if that’s what you happen to have. They can both work interchangeably as liquid sweeteners in most of my baked goods (like pumpkin donuts or strawberry lemonade donuts or zucchini carrot apple muffins).
You can usually taste honey when you bake with it, but since we’re usually just ¼ cup FOR THE WHOLE RECIPE, you can’t taste it at all.

(Did I mention that there’s just ¼ cup of sweetener in the whole recipe? That’s just 1.3 tsp of honey per muffin. How awesome is that… FOR A MUFFIN!!)

Eggs

If you’d like to make this recipe vegan, you can add flax eggs!

Bananas

I love finding recipes that call for brown bananas. We usually use them up in smoothies or freeze them for later or even make a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins.

But sometimes I want to make something that’s pretty cheap and DOESN’T require brown bananas because I just don’t have any!

Use whatever bananas you have for this banana bread recipe – green, yellow, or brown.
Bananas get sweeter as they ripen, so a batch made with brown bananas will be slightly sweeter than a batch made with green bananas. However, I tested it both ways and you’re not sacrificing flavor at all.
The only tip I have for using non-brown bananas is to give them a whiz in your blender first since they aren’t as soft and don’t dissolve into a lovely banana puree as easily. So it’s basically one more minute of prep that you don’t have to do. Not too shabby!

Equipment

If you use silicone liners (I have these), the muffins are super easy to pop out once they’re cool. Store them in a freezer-safe container for up to 3 months. I like to pull them out for breakfast the night before so they have time to come to room temperature, but you can enjoy them cold too!

Given the fact that these have 5 ingredients and can be made in your blender, these should be on your weekly make-ahead list. In fact, make a double batch!

Blender Banana Bread Muffins Instructions

Step 1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper or silicone muffin liners.

Step 2. In a blender, combine the bananas, eggs, and honey. Blend on low until everything is mostly smooth.

Bananas, eggs, and honey are in the blender. This is the first step when making homemade banana bread muffins.

Step 3. When the oven is preheated, add the rolled oats and baking soda to the blender. Add salt and cinnamon (both optional), if using. Blend again on low for about one minute until everything is well combined and smooth.

Step 4. Immediately divide evenly among 12 silicone muffin liners. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out mostly clean.

These blender banana bread muffins are in silicone liners in a muffin tin. They are ready to go into the oven and bake!

Step 5. Allow them to cool completely before removing them for storage.

Looking to Shake Things Up?

If you’d like to add something else to this banana mixture, here are a few suggestions:

chopped walnuts
pecans
ANY kind of nuts you have on hand
cinnamon
nutmeg
dried fruit
chocolate chips

Another idea is to top these banana bread muffins with rolled oats. I think it’s a wonderful touch and makes it look pretty.

FAQs about Banana Muffins

Can bananas be too ripe for banana bread muffins?

Bananas can never be too ripe for banana bread muffins! The BEST bananas would be black and not yellow. Rule of thumb, the darker the better.

P.S. I have tested this recipe with green and ripe bananas and the flavor isn’t much different.

What are the black specks in banana bread muffins?

The black specks that are found in banana bread muffins are seeds from the banana. These seeds are sterile and have no productivity capacity.

Do you need baking powder for muffins?

I don’t use baking powder for this recipe or for muffins but I have used them in cakes and bread. Baking soda has worked great!

Side Dishes

There are times when I like to have banana bread muffins with a side dish. Here are a few suggestions if you’re like me and like a bit of variety in the morning:

More Tasty Muffin Recipes

Breakfast meal prep ideas for the whole week in one hour! 8 tasty recipes (some with no eggs!) that adapt for weight loss, low carb or bodybuilding. : : DontWasteTheCrumbs.com

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