Want a healthy and delicious snack for the whole family to enjoy? Make a big batch of these easy banana chocolate chip muffins, pop the extras in the freezer, and you’ll be ready when your little hungry hippos come nosing around.

This morning when I woke up, it was ONE degree outside. ONE! I can’t even say, “It’s freezing cold today!” because that doesn’t even begin to capture the depth of the cold. “Freezing” is an understatement. Does anyone else think that it should NOT be allowed to get that cold?

Little Man keeps asking me when it’s going to be summer again, and I hate having to tell him that we’ve still got several months of snow before we can break out the shorts and flip flops again. 

Since the weather is downright depressing, I’m consoling myself with a lot of baking. It warms up the house a bit, it keeps us busy as we all cook together, and we get to eat good food.

One of my favorite quick things to whip up when I need to warm up is a good batch of muffins. We love muffins. At any given time we have have at least one batch of muffins in the freezer, ready to be thawed for a quick morning snack.

This week, I tried out a new recipe. It was a cold morning where we had nothing planned, so I had each of the boys grab a kitchen chair to stand on and we all crowded around the island making these banana chocolate chip muffins. I already have a banana bran muffin recipe, but I wanted to try a more traditional version. As I often do with new recipes (following it exactly would be far too boring), I tweaked the already pretty healthy recipe to make it a little more healthy for my family.

My favorite way to add a little extra health oomph is to replace some of the flour with ground flax seed. It’s full of lignans and Omega 3 fatty acids, which is especially good if you’re genetically predisposed to have high cholesterol (thanks, Mom). I also cut down the amount of sugar and chocolate chips. Oh, and I doubled the recipe, because 12 muffins is just NOT enough for my house. I made 12 regular-sized muffins and 24 mini muffins. There is something about eating the mini ones that is just fun.

Let me assure you, the taste did NOT suffer. I was so please with the way these little muffins turned out. They were moist and full of flavor, and they stayed fresh for several days in a zipped bag without drying out (my usual complaint with muffins). It’s is my new favorite muffin recipe!

Are you ready to try them out? Enjoy!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Notes: You can make these as regular-sized or mini muffins. If you make the mini ones, fill mini muffin cups all the way full (but not overflowing) and bake for 10-12 minutes instead of 16-18 for the regular-sized muffins. For whatever reason, Little Brother ONLY likes mini muffins. Weird two-year-olds. 

Yield: 24 regular sized muffins (48 mini muffins)

Ingredients:

• 3 average-sized bananas, peeled and mashed
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup white flour
• 1/3 cup ground flax seed
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine bananas, brown sugar, yogurt, eggs, and applesauce.
2. In a separate bowl, combine all the rest of the ingredients.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix gently until the batter is well-combined (no dry streaks).
4. Grease muffin tins or line cups with cupcake liners. (Note: I recently learned that if you lightly grease your cupcake liners, the muffins peel away easily, instead of getting torn up as you pull the paper away. Cool!)
5. Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups, and bake for 16-18 minutes (10-12 if you’re doing mini muffins). Remove muffins to a wire rack to cool.

Source: Adapted from a recipe from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe. I changed up some of the ingredients, miniaturized the muffins, and adjusted cooking time accordingly.

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If you like these muffins, try some of our other favorites:

Blueberry French Toast Muffins

Mini Blueberry Muffins

Favorite Banana Chocolate Chip Bran Muffins