School 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.
Enter 5-ingredient banana bread muffins!
Why should you make banana bread muffins? 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 afterwards.
- 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!)
If these aren’t reasons enough, these banana bread muffins taste JUST LIKE banana bread, except in 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 muffins from the freezer and toss them to the kids in the back seat.
Minimal mess (if any), food that will do their bodies good and you avoid the mom guilt that often comes with the convenience food short cuts.
5-Ingredient Banana Bread Muffins
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 more dense than a traditional muffin.
I actually think that’s for the better though. These banana bread muffins feels 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.
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!!)
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!
I topped these banana bread muffins with rolled oats because I think it looks pretty, but you don’t have to do that. 🙂
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!
5-ingredient Banana Bread Muffins
Make this easy and healthy banana bread muffins recipe in the blender – use honey instead of brown sugar and add cinnamon or chocolate chips. It’s the best!
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 15 mins
- Total Time: 20 mins
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Oven
- 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)**
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper or silicone muffin liners.
- In a blender, combine the bananas, eggs and honey. Blend on low until everything is mostly smooth.
- 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.
- 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.
- Allow to cool completely before removing for storage.
Notes
** I’ve made these muffins both with salt and cinnamon, and without. Neither ingredient is necessary, but I personally prefer the taste of both.
Making banana bread muffins?
- I mix it up in the best blender ever (this one is the most affordable or there’s this option too.)
- These silicone muffin liners (easier clean up).
- This cookie scoop (for even sized muffins).
Best part? Cooking once and eating twice! The key to keeping real food on the table without spending all day in the kitchen.
Is there a way I can incorporate bran into this recipe without changing the composition, consistency, or flavor profile too much?
My suggestion would be:
3 bananas
2 eggs
1/4 cup honey
1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)
3/4 cup bran
Side note though approximately 12% of each whole grain oat is the bran portion already.
love the recipe. im off a lot of foods and hard to find yummy stuff that dont call for weird ingrediants. do you have other recipes for me? im off: sugar, chocolate, tomatoes, sesame, peanuts, wheat, seeds, legumes.
Hi Te’na! I’m not an officially allergy blog, so I suggest browsing my existing recipes to see if any sound good, and fit your restrictions. 🙂
May I please use the pictures you have used on your blog for a school project that I am using this recipe for? If you are not OK with that I completely understand, I just wanted to ask for permission before I use them.
Hi Kylie! Please submit your requests via email: tiffany (at) dontwastethecrumbs (dot) com.
How long to the muffins typically stay before having to freeze?
It depends on how warm the room is, but anywhere from 2-5 days on the counter or 4-7 in the fridge is normal.
How come the recipe from the email say’s 5-minute apple spiced muffins but when you click on it you get a 5 ingredient banana muffin recipe?
That was probably a typo Jeannette. 🙂 Bloggers make mistakes too!
Ok. Thanks.
Thank you so much for this recipe! I made it today and the whole family likes them! I’m not going to tell them there’s oats in there! Haha. I LOVE that you do this in the blender. I got the Ninja Professional 1000 for Christmas and I’m eager to find ways to use it.
You’re very welcome Autumn! I’m so glad your family likes them! ♥
Hi Tiffany, I’ve made these before and like em! Now I’m wondering if you have a suggestion for how i might replace the honey with applesauce? I know they’d lose some sweetness but I’m thinking that maybe between the bananas and applesauce they’d still be a little sweet. Anyways I’m curious if, with all your experience experimenting with and creating recipes, you might have some guidance for me. Thanks 🙂 your blog is one of my very favorite places to be online.
Hi Heidi! Thank you for your kind words! I’ve replaced banana with applesauce before, but not the honey… but I bet it would be okay! If you give it a shot, let us know how it turns out!
Hello! Could I use maple syrup instead of honey? If yes, would I use the same amount? Thanks in advance!
Hi Navya,
Yes. You can use maple instead. I’d probably say replace it 1:1, but remember that maple is a bit sweeter than honey. So, keep that in mind depending how on sweet you like your muffins. 🙂
What’s your favorite way to freeze stuff like this? Freezer bags or Ziploc containers? I have a bunch of freezer bags to use up, but would they do better in a container? Also how could I prevent freezer burn? I have the worst luck with that!
Freezer bags for sure. I put a dozen muffins in a bag (laying them flat so bags can be stacked on top of each other, rather than haphazardly putting muffins in the bag) push out the air, then suck it out (yes, I put my lips to the bag and suck out the extra air!) and then freeze. Freezer burn is from the extra air, so the more you eliminate, the better off you’ll be!
I use a straw to suck the air out of bags as it is easier to get more out. Or I freeze the muffins open on a half sheet or other tray, then vacuum seal once frozen hard. Don’t try vacuum sealing without freezing first or you will have muffin crumbs!!!
Amazing recipe! They’re light and fluffy. No added fat or refined sugar. Few ingredients and hardly any dishes! The guidance or having everything ready and adding the oat flour at the end is probably what contributes to them feeling like regular banana muffins. The only change I did was to add some erythritol instead of the full amount of honey. I didn’t have a lot of honey left but it probably would have been perfect with slightly less. Thank you!
★★★★★
We made these yesterday for todays breakfast and they were soooo goood!! So easy.
My banana muffins are in the oven but I had enough dough for 18 muffins. Not sure how they will turn out. Wondering if the size of the bananas matter? Mine were medium to large.
Nah, it won’t matter in taste. You’ll just get more muffins!
These sound so yummy and easy but I have one question. You talk at the beginning about putting the oats in the blender to make oat flour but, then in the directions, you say to add rolled oats to blender after the bananas, eggs and honey. Do we need to turn oats into oat flour first?
Yes – make the oat flour, dump it out into another bowl, then add it at the end. The bowl will just need a quick rinse to be clean!
Does that mean that it’s 2 cups oats turned into flour? Or two cups oat flour? I assume it’s different but I guess I could do that experiment myself! Thanks!
Hi Emily! I measure 2 cups of oats, not oat flour. There is a slight difference that won’t make or break a recipe, but since I keep rolled oats on hand, not oat flour, it’s just easier to measure oats!
Oh happy day! No more waiting for the bananas to turn brown. I think I might have to turn this into a six ingredient recipe and add some chocolate chips Thanks, Tiffany and happy Monday.
You’re very welcome JoAnn!! Happy Monday to you!
I’m hoping that this recipe can be used to make a loaf rather than muffins.
I haven’t tried making a loaf Tamara, but I wouldn’t go for it… at least not as-written. If you want to sub all-purpose flour for oat flour, then you have a fighting chance!
For a loaf start start checking in after 15 minutes. I used a 5×8 loaf and a 8×8 pan and cooked it for about 25 minutes and it comes out perfect