Kids in the Kitchen Wednesday: Going Bananas

A few weeks ago, the Wisconsin Test Kitchen was out grocery shopping; and found bananas on sale for 49 cents a pound. Needless to say, we STOCKED UP. Between smoothies, muffins and just eating them plain: we go through an absurd amount of bananas in our house.

However, perhaps purchasing 3 large bunches of bananas was a bit excessive. So, we went into baking and freezing of muffin mode (remember last week's blog?). But during all our shopping; we forgot to stock up on flour and sugar for Muffin Madness. Oops. 

Thanks to Pinterest, we quickly found a recipe for banana muffins that used oat flour (quick cooking oats ground up in the food processor), and no sugar. Done! Next thing we knew, we had two dozen muffins cooling, and the banana surplus was finally gone. Thanks, Pinterest!

Banana Oat Muffins
Recipe courtesy of: Chelsea's Messy Apron

INGREDIENTS
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 cup (~2 bananas) ripe mashed bananas
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 and 1/2 cups oat flour (blended oats)
2/3 cup quick oats
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a muffin tin and set aside. Do not use muffin liners as these muffins will stick to the liners.

In a large bowl, beat together the Greek yogurt and the bananas. Make sure your bananas were ripe and are well mashed to avoid large banana chunks. Beat in the eggs, vanilla extract, and brown sugar.

Meanwhile in a blender or food processor blend quick oats or old fashioned oats to form a flour consistency. Make sure to measure the oat flour AFTER it has been blended and not before.

In a separate bowl, stir together the oat flour, the quick oats (MUST be quick oats not steel cut or old fashioned), cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Over mixing will result in dense muffins. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Divide the batter among the 12 muffin cavities. These muffins don't rise too much so use all the batter in the 12 cavities.
Bake for 17-20 minutes. Remove and allow to slightly cool and then pull them out of the muffin pan onto a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Store these muffins in an airtight container or bag in the fridge (warm in the microwave before eating) and enjoy or freeze within 3 days.

The muffins turned out awesome: the oatmeal made them hearty, and the chocolate added a nice pop of sweetness. It was an excellent use of the last bananas we had; but we're really hoping not to see any more sales going forward...

Stay Cool,
The Cool Dads Crew