Emily's Healthy Home

I love quick breads. I love muffins. Muffin love trumps bread love. Why? Simple reason really, when I make a loaf of bread Ben either 1. ignores it because he has to cut it to get it, or 2. He does cut it and makes a crumby mess everywhere. So if I just make batter into muffins we all win, Ben (or the boys) can quickly and easy grab and eat one, meaning they won’t go to waste, and they won’t make a mess. You could argue though that with kids they crumbs would still end up all over the dang house either way, and well this is true. 

These are kitchen warming-celebration, I have rotting bananas on my counter muffins. Incase you are wondering, the other day I dove into refinishing the look of our countertops. 

Before my countertop transformation, great quality laminate, but outdated pale pink color.

Ah much better, imitation handcrafted “granite”! If anyone is interested I might possibly be able to do a few posts on the process I went through to do this project, until then, you can find the main tutorial that I closely followed HERE.

When I put it all together this evening, I wanted to surprise Ben with the final product and some yummy baked goodness. Ben LOVES banana bread, and I just of course has a few bananas on the counter near death.  I SO SO SO wanted to make Banana BREAD, but I especially did not want messes in my NEW kitchen that I worked so hard on.

Although I followed my general muffin measurement formula for when I create new muffin recipes, this batch only gave me 10. Two reasons, I really piled the batter in those cups, and two, I had quite a few large spoonful’s myself, I was starving. I can always tell how my muffins will be by the taste of the batter, If I end up not wanting to make them into muffins and want to just sit down with the bowl and lick it clean, then I know it’ll be a winner.

Winners they were. It’s almost as if the one on the right is smiling at me, you know you have a good muffin when it smiles at you. I’m pretty sure chocolate and sushi smile at me ALL THE TIME. I should have married a sushi chef, okay getting off track…

Can you find the muffin? I should name my new countertops dark chocolate muffin granite. (Dark Chocolate is the name of the main color I used to create my look, yes I do have chocolate problems.)

I’ve been keeping a secret. A secret that might make some quit reading and find something else to do/make.

Gound Flax.

Oopps. Oh stop it, it won’t kill you, and you can’t taste it.

Just look at them, they are all smiling, such happy muffins.  Sorry, I may partially be high on polyurethane fumes.

Banana Almond (flax) Chip Muffins

makes 10 muffins, piled high and few spoonfuls of batter for the chef.

3 medium ripe Bananas

1/2 cup Plain Greek Yogurt

1/4 cup Honey

2/3 cup Stevia in the Raw

1/2 cup chopped/slivered Almonds

2 Eggs

1 tsp. Almond Extract

1 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

2/3 cup Quick Oats

1/4 cup Ground Flax Seed

1 tsp. Cinnamon

1/2 tsp. Cloves

2 tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Baking Soda

Directions: Because I didn’t want to make a mess in my kitchen I was able to mix these up in one medium-large bowl.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and line a regular sized muffin tin with PARHCMENT paper liners (only the best for fat-free baking). First throw in your bananas and mash with a fork very well.  Then add yogurt, honey, stevia, almonds, eggs, and extract until blended well.  After blended throw in your flour, oats, flax, cinnamon and cloves, stir again.  When your oven is preheated stir in at the last minute the baking powder and baking soda.  Using a meatball scooper fill the muffin cups to the top and slightly over (but not like making a mess over the top type thing.) Bake for 25 minutes.  Yum.

I want another, but I really could use some sleep after not getting much last night and a long day today. Yawn.