Healthy Breakfast Muffins

Now the title of this recipe may seem somewhat of an oxymoron: healthy muffins? muffins for breakfast?
But I promise you, this will become a regular fix in your life once you try it. They are quick, simple, delicious, and freeze and refrigerate well, meaning you can eat them whenever you want and make them in advance. I love to make a batch on Sunday nights meaning I have breakfast for much of the week sorted. It also requires very few ingredients, so you can probably whip it up right now without a shop!

This recipe comes from my head and a desperate need for muffins but without most of the ingredients more complex recipes ask for. This makes a batch of six fairly large and dense muffins.

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Ingredients (per 6 muffins)

• 100g self-raising flour
• 3 tbsp light brown sugar (though today I used white, it doesn't matter much!)
• 1 tsp baking powder (baking soda and a pinch of salt work pretty well too)
• 1 egg
• 50ml milk (any type you like)
• 50ml sunflower/vegetable/canola etc oil (not olive!)
• 2 bananas, mashed

You can add whatever you like to this basic mix, try 25g unsweetened coconut for fiber or diced blueberries for even more fruit! Oats also work very well in these to keep you filled up until lunchtime.

Optional toppings, though really, just do what you like!

• Cinammon mixed with sugar
• Oats, with the above
• Coconut, icing sugar and a drop of milk
• Demerara sugar, or similar
• Crushed banana chips
• Maple drizzle (maple syrup and icing sugar heated over a double boiler)

Serving ideas

• Fresh fruit and/or yoghurt
• Hot with jam
• Savoury food such as a poached egg and bacon

These lists could be endless!

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Firstly, pre-heat your oven to around 200°C, and line a muffin tin. I prefer to use paper cases here because it makes it easier to remove (and keeps them healthier) but a spray of oil or butter works fine.

In a large mixing bowl stir together all the dry ingredients, flour, sugar, baking powder.

In a smaller bowl or jug, whisk the wet ingredients, banana, egg, milk, oil, until fairly smooth. Pour into the dry ingredients and mix well.

Tip: Keep the banana mix a bit lumpy so you get delicious hot banana chunks in the muffins. Yum!

Fill the cases very high with mixture - these muffins are quite dense and do not rise very much. Now is the time to add a sprinkle of whatever topping you fancy.

Bake for about 20 minutes. They will turn fairly dark on top but don't worry, they're not burning, that's just from the bananas! 

Tip: To check if they are done, tap the top with you finger or the back of a spoon and they should rise back up. Using a kebab stick to see if the insides are moist doesn't work here because they will be very moist and they will stay that way!

Serve with toppings, fruit, etc as warm and as fresh as possible, then put the rest in an airtight container in the fridge and they should last the week.

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Source this time is my brain, teehee