Banana-Berry Applesauce Muffins

To say I have a love-hate relationship with banana muffins may very well be an understatement.

Seeing as I eat a banana nearly every day for breakfast (our breakfast bill for the week rings up to about a whopping $2!), there are inevitably some sad, sorry bananas that go brown before they have a chance to be eaten. And so goes my experimenting with banana muffins. (Disclaimer: the photo below was taken a day before I made this recipe. Slightly more ripe is better for the recipe, but not for the eyes.)

See, I didn’t just want to make any banana muffins. I wanted to make super-duper healthy ones. Like with applesauce, or oats, or agave, or Greek yogurt. Yet my tests garnered some less-than-stellar results: some were strange textures, others nearly flavorless, others were even stranger textures.

But, fear not! I am sharing this recipe because it is a keeper. I based it off of this recipe. They are so delicious that I am proclaiming my struggle over and now I’ll have to find a new food to fight. Annnnnd there is no butter or oil, but they are still wonderfully nice and moist.

You’ll need:

2 ripe bananas
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup applesauce
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond flavoring
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 heaping cup frozen mixed berries (I used a combination of blackberries, raspberries and blueberries)

To make:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mash bananas with a fork and mix in sugar. Holding back the fruit, stir in remaining ingredients until just blended. Fold in berries. Pour batter into greased muffins tins and bake approximately 20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. This makes 12 muffins.

It was so hard not to eat them all fresh out of the oven, but those piping hot pockets of berries were a good deterrent for someone who usually breaks the cooling rule.

Yum, yum, yum. And, oh happy day, I’ve finally got the winning banana muffin!