Banana Pear Muffins

I originally came up with the recipe for these sugar free muffins as a baby led weaning banana muffin recipe, when I was looking for portable blw snacks. (Hence the recipe makes 24 mini muffins rather than larger ones.) Since sharing them, these banana and pear muffins have been the most popular blw recipes on the blog, and for good reason.

They are so easy to make, which is pretty important when you have one hand or making them during nap time! Just two bowls: one for the dry ingredients, and one for the wet (including the bananas and grated pear.)

I would say these easy banana muffins are about as healthy as banana muffins can get:

• They’re naturally sweetened with banana and pear rather than loaded with refined sugar.
  • Note: The riper the bananas are, the sweeter the muffins will be.
• They are made with olive oil, rather than using butter or margarine, which makes the muffins tender. You can’t taste the olive oil.

Muffins make such a great portable snack, and I continue to make them a lot, along with these other baby led weaning snacks that have since turned into favourite kid snacks:  Vegan Blueberry Muffins, no added sugar Pear Flapjack and nut free Spinach pesto pinwheels

Tips to make these healthy banana muffins the best they can be:

1. Mash the bananas well, especially if making mini banana muffins, as the chunks of banana can seem quite squishy and not popular with babies and toddlers that have texture issues.
2. Stir the baking powder and bicarb of soda into the flour well. I didn’t do this once and the bicarb stuck in clumps and there were brown bitter clumps in the muffins.
3. Once you add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, DON’T overmix. This can make the muffins heavy. It is best to leave a few small lumps of unmixed flour.

Do these sugar free banana muffins freeze?

Yes, they do. Make sure they are cold, then wrap well and put in a container or bag. Take out as many as you like to defrost. They will keep up to 6 weeks, after that they can become dry.

Substitutes:

Pear: use a grated apple instead.

Mixed Spice: Use the same amount of ground cinnamon (You can also leave out the spices altogether)

If you like this recipe, you may also like:

Savoury Pumpkin Pancakes

Frozen blueberry yogurt drops

Savoury Pinwheel hearts

3 Ingredient Porridge Bites

Avocado and Egg Sandwiches – the simplest and tastiest egg sandwiches!