Oatmeal Banana Breakfast Muffins

Hello all!  Over the past week I’ve been super busy with school and finals.  Because of my busy schedule, I’ve been trying to save myself some time wherever I can and I found something that really works for me: breakfast on the go!  I’ve never been a fan of cold cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, so any quick and easy breakfast ideas are a great thing for me. 

I found the original recipe for these muffins on The Well Traveled Wife, and added my own little twist.

Oatmeal Banana Breakfast Muffins

2 1/2 cups old fashioned oats

1 cup greek yogurt

2 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

2 ripe bananas

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and either spray the muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray or line muffin tin with liners.

The main objective now is to turn the 2 1/2 cups of oats into oat flour.  There are a few ways you can do this:  the original recipe says to put all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until the oats are smooth.  I don’t have a food processor.  The recipe also suggests using a blender, but I don’t think my blender is powerful enough to do this job efficiently.  I came up with the idea of using my coffee grinder to process the oats into oat flour.  It’s a bit slow, because you can only grind about a 1/2 cup of oats at a time, but it works well for me.

2. Take your ground oats and add the rest of your ingredients and stir them together.  This is a great time to add chocolate chips, craisins, raisins, chopped nuts, flax seed oil, protein powder or any other add-ins that you would like.

3. Fill each cup of the muffin tin about 1/2 to 3/4 full and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until done.

4. Let cool and enjoy!

A few comments I have:

• The original recipe says to use either foil or silicon liner, or to forgo the liner and grease the muffin tins.  I used paper liner and the muffins did stick to the liners a bit until they totally cooled.  Also, I found that the more you overcook them, the more they stick to the paper liners.  If you don’t want the muffins to stick to the liners, perhaps using the other liners would work better.

• I found that if I added craisins or raisins, I didn’t need to add the full 3/4 cup of sugar.

• You could sprinkle a pinch of sugar on top on each muffin before baking so they would have a sweet and slightly crunchy top. 

• If you use larger muffin tins, this recipe makes about a dozen muffins.  I used smaller cupcake sized tins and made about 18 muffins.

Not only do these make a great breakfast, but they also are good afternoon or midnight snack.  I make a batch on Sunday evenings and enjoy them throughout the week!