Banana Bread Muffins

Well hello there! Greetings from the fresh new blog! You'll notice things are looking nice and fresh and a little different around here. This new site has been a long time coming. The new site design and everything including the logo design was done by myself. Oy, it was a lot of work but so worth it! I hope you're loving it as much as I am. I especially love that the site is now mobile friendly.

Stay tuned for more updates coming!

But for now. Muffins.

These super addictive gluten-free muffins are nothing like ordinary muffins. They may look like a regular muffin made with sugar and nutrition-less white flour, but they're not.

If you like banana bread, you're going to love these.

These are pretty special in that always fluffy, always moist, and always make the house smell good way. These are one of those recipes that I make time and time again. They are everything I want in a banana muffin.

In addition to having no added sugar, they are made healthier with oat flour (I only use gluten-free oat flour in these and no other flour), unsweetened applesauce, and plain non-fat greek yogurt. To sweeten I use powdered stevia.

These muffins are perfect for either a quick and easy breakfast or mid afternoon/ nighttime snack with a cup of tea.

For 1 muffin you get 131 calories, 18g carbs (out of which 3.8g is fibre), 3.7g protein, and 5.2g fat.

Everyone in my house is going GAGA for these banana muffins. They're so soft and delicious!!! It's hard to believe they're good for you. But enough yada yada from me. Here's the recipe...

Banana Bread Muffins

(makes 12 muffins)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups (180g) oat flour
• 1-2 tsp liquid stevia drops or 18 packets of powdered stevia (I used Sweet Leaf packets)
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 3 ripe bananas, mashed (about 330g)
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup plain non-fat greek yogurt
• 3 tbsp (45g) unsalted butter, melted
• 3 tbsp unsweetened applesauce

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Grease a muffin tin or line with paper liners. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, stevia, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the mashed banana, eggs, vanilla, yogurt, butter, and applesauce. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir everything together with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon until just combined. Avoid over-mixing, which will produce tough, dense muffins.
3. Spoon batter into prepared muffin tins, filling all the way to the top.
4. Bake until the muffins are lightly golden brown on top and when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean; about 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and place pan on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes. Store muffins at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 5 days. Muffins freeze well, up to 3 months.

Nutrition Facts

For one muffins: 131 calories, 5.2 grams of fat, 2.3g saturated fat, 17.9 grams of carbs, 3.8g fibre , 4.7g sugar, 186.2mg sodium, 3.7 grams of protein

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Cookies

Happy Tuesday people! How about some cookies to get you through the rest of this week?

I'm a bit short on words + brain power tonight. So I figure we should just get right down to business and into things.

I was super pumped about the way these turned out. I’ve been working on a few different trials for protein cookies lately, and the first handful of tries were just not quite cutting it.

But THESE, these were an absolute YES. I made them in 20 minutes flat.

The light was acting quite nice for this photo shoot, so I continued to snap away and have fun with it. Sometimes it can be a real tough thing to work with. The great thing about using these cookies as a photo subject, was that they have a lot of texture, which makes for an interesting photo.

I think the key ingredient to these cookies is definitely the brown rice protein. It makes all the difference when it comes to texture. They don’t spread very much at all while baking, so if you want a flatter cookie you can give them a little pat down before baking.

In one of my un-blog worthy trials, I used whey protein powder. While they were good they came out far too dry for my liking.

These cookies are super soft, moist, and full of peanut buttery chocolate flavour.

Oh and did I mention that they’re low carb?

Just look at that texture!

Now I suppose I should give you that recipe. ;)

Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter Protein Cookies

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(makes 10 cookies)

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup Brown Rice Protein Powder (chocolate, vanilla, or plain)
• 1/4 cup Almond Flour 
• 3 packets of stevia (or 2 tbsp unrefined sugar)
• 1 tsp butter, softened (or melted coconut oil)
• 3 tbsp natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 25 grams 70% dark chocolate 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F.
2. In a medium sized bowl, mix together brown rice protein powder, ground almonds, and stevia (or sugar if using instead). Stir in softened butter, peanut butter, and milk to combine thoroughly. 
3. Add chocolate and stir.
4. Spoon the dough onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. The recipe makes 10 cookies.
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely on cookie sheet before transferring to a sealed container. The cookies will be slightly crumbly when they first come out of the oven so be sure to let them rest and cool before storing.

Nutritional Facts:

(per cookie)

Calories: 190   Fat: 12.5g   Saturated Fat: 2.7g   Carbs: 7g   Fibre: 2.2g   Sugar: 2.4g   Sodium: 28mg   Protein: 13.7g

I'm pretty sure your Tuesday needs a cookie.

What are you waiting for?