Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins have been on my mind for a while now. I finally had a few overripe bananas (see below on how overripe) so I could experiment with some recipes!
It’s been so rainy the past few weeks that I’ve been able to catch up on a few different projects I’ve been wanting to get to. This is one of those projects.
Gluten Free (or not) Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
Now, let’s talk about the gluten free aspect of these muffins. If you’re really skeptical and don’t want to even try it, that’s fine, just use 2.5 cups of plain all purpose flour. However, I have to tell you that I have found a key to great gluten free baked goods that yields and fluffy and delicious texture that looks and tastes like flour. It’s a 50/50 blend of Bob’s Red Mill GF Flour Blend and Almond Flour. Any brand of almond flour will do, just try to find superfine or finely ground. Blanched or not doesn’t matter so much, I’ve tried with both.
If you use all of the flour blend the food comes out too starchy (also the nutritional content is so much less – might as well just have the gluten in my opinion. At least flour has a gram or two of protein, right?). If you use all almond flour though the muffins tend to just fall apart and they taste really grainy.
In case you didn’t know, I love cake and cake-like things, so I want muffins to taste more like a cupcake than a piece of cardboard. So the 50/50 mix of these two is pretty incredible. The almond flour also gives the slightest nutty flavor which goes very well with the banana.
Old Bananas versus Old-ish Bananas
Some bakers say that you should use bananas that are so old they are starting to ooze out the liquified sugar from the peels (in case you didn’t know – that is a very, very black banana). I’m not going to go that far, but I will say when I peel my brown bananas (yes the peels are dark brown, almost black) you can see some of those areas where the sugar is starting to become liquid and ooze out of the banana. This is a good sign!
And it makes the bananas very mushy, which helps to get a nice smooth consistency easily when you mash them up. I’m a fan of a smooth banana bread batter rather than chunks of bananas found throughout the bread or muffins.
However – I realize that the nutritional value of bananas degrades as they get that ripe. So, if you would like to use slightly overripe bananas, or ripe bananas that is perfectly fine and you will still have a lovely banana muffin!
Chocolate Chips or Walnuts?
Really, pick your poison. Or maybe do both! I personally prefer a nice semi-sweet chocolate chip (and lots of them) with my banana muffins. If you’re more of a nut person, then easily substitute the same amount of chocolate chips for walnuts/pecans/pistachios/pepitas whatever your fancy.
Just keep in mind that because of the almond flour, there already is a slight nutty flavor in these. It’s perfect though! None of the bitterness from skins of nuts, just a nice toasted flavor. Which also goes swimmingly well with the chocolate chips in my opinion.
PrintBanana Chocolate Chip Muffins
The almond flour in these muffins makes them juuuust barely nutty, and so fluffy! I bake a double batch and keep some in the freezer!
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 20
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: muffin
- Method: baking
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Gluten Free
Ingredients
1 1/2 Cups Almond Flour
1 Cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour Mix
1/4 Cup Truvia (or use 3/4 cup regular granulated sugar)
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 Tablespoon Baking Soda
3/4 teaspoon Salt
6 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
3 Ripe Bananas
2 Eggs
1/3 Cup Whole Milk
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Chocolate Chips – to taste
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 400 F and grease 1 regular sized muffin tin.
2. In a large bowl mix flours, sugar, baking powder and soda, and salt together. Then cut in the butter (or just mush the butter into the flour with your hands) until the mixture is coarse and feels like damp sand. You can also use a food processor this.
3. In a blender, stand mixer (or you can simply crush the bananas with my hands if you don’t want to dirty another dish), combine bananas, eggs, milk, and vanilla extract. Mix well. I like having some small chunks of banana, but if you like yours completely smooth then continue blending/mixing until mixture is smooth.
4. Combine the banana mixture with your dry mix and mix until incorporated. It will be a touch lumpy. Batter should be fairly thick. Add in chocolate chips (as many as desired).
5. Spoon into your greased muffin cups/tins and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing to continue cooling on rack.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Muffin
- Calories: 200
- Sugar: 13.2 g
- Sodium: 366mg
- Fat: 12.2g
- Saturated Fat: 6.4g
- Carbohydrates: 26.8g
- Fiber: 1.9g
- Protein: 3.4g
- Cholesterol: 43mg
Keywords: Gluten Free Almond Flour Banana Muffins, Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, Muffins, Baking, Healthy, Low Sugar, Low Sugar Muffins
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