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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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)
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Banana Pear Muffins
Author: Robyn
Ingredients
- 90 g wholemeal plain flour
- 50 g plain flour
- ½ teaspoon mixed spice
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon bicarb of soda
- 2 medium to large very ripe bananas mashed
- 1 egg beaten
- 70 ml olive oil
- 1 medium ripe pear or apple, peeled
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 170˚C/340˚F
- Mix the flours, mixed spice, baking powder and bicarb together in a large bowl.
- In another bowl, mix the mashed bananas with the egg and olive oil. Finely grate the pear (or apple) straight into the egg mixture, to capture any juice that comes from grating the fruit.
- Lightly mix the wet and dry ingredients together – if you mix too much it can make the muffins heavy.
- Spoon into a mini muffin tray – about 1 heaped teaspoon mixture per muffin (they should be quite full).
- Bake for 15 minutes, until golden and springy to touch.
- Leave in tin a couple of minutes then move to wire rack to cool completely.
Nutrition
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Amy says
Would love to try these out. Is there a substitute for egg in this recipe? My little one can’t have egg, but anything else is okay.
Robyn says
Hi Amy, I haven’t tested these muffins with an egg substitute I’m afraid. However these blueberry muffins are egg-free https://www.mrsjoneskitchen.com/vegan-blueberry-muffins/ and you could use a dairy-free milk if your little one can’t have dairy. You could use a coarsley grated pear if you didn’t want to use blueberries. Hope this helps. Robyn