chai banana nut muffins || happy blogiversary

This week marks my FOUR year blogiversary — can you believe it? 

In case you missed any of these this past year, here’s your chance to revisit:

• Mexican Lasagna became a family favorite.
• I made front page of the food section!
• And I was on the news! (go make the soup and biscuits ASAP!)
• I took 3rd place in a cookie contest this breadmaker was one of my prizes — make this bread!
• These “anything goes egg cups” have been on continuous rotation on our breakfast menu.
• We welcomed our little Lincoln into our family!
• I’ve been teaming up with the Pairdd team — do yourself a favor and order for this week!

What’s to come this year:

• Videos — I feel like we should have more videos, yes?
• More “Gluten Free in MKE” restaurant reviews — where would you like me to visit?
• Being here more often. (I hope) Between house hunting, moving to a temporary condo, and getting a new pup… I’ve been taking some time to tune into real life, but I miss being here, so I plan to post more often.

Now let’s CELEBRATE!

CHAI BANANA NUT MUFFINS

adapted from Cooking Light

What you need:

3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
4 tablespoons butter, softened
2 eggs
1/2 cup coconut sugar (regular or brown sugar will work as well)
12 oz GF flour mix — I used Jules GF Flour mix
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup walnuts, optional

 

What to do:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tins with muffin wrappers or grease with butter or coconut oil.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Set aside.

Mix bananas, yogurt, butter, and eggs in a large bowl. (I use a stand mixer.) Add in sugar and vanilla, mix to combine all ingredients well. Slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix well. This is a pretty thick batter, so you can use a cookie scoop to drop batter into muffin cups, filling them about half full.

If you choose to make them chai banana NUT muffins, just lightly push the walnut pieces into the tops of the muffins. You could also mix these into the batter before filling the cups. If you’re feeling fancy, sprinkle some of the coconut sugar or brown sugar on top as well.

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Times may vary depending on how full you filled the cups.

[try to] Allow to cool, then serve warm with a little butter or a simple glaze. (just combine powdered sugar with water or milk and a dash of vanilla — add water bit by bit until you get the consistency you’d like)

NOTES from SARAH:

•  I don’t like my muffins too sweet, so you’ll notice there is only a half cup of coconut sugar used — feel free to up your sweetener if you’d like, also adding the glaze will sweeten things up.
•  They are just as good without the nuts, I did half with half without.
•  I also made a batch of my pumpkin spice cookies with rumchata cream cheese frosting this weekend — add those to your baking roster as well.

 

This recipe makes 12 regular muffins plus some — meaning you can make a couple more regular size muffins, a bunch of mini muffins, or find a cute baking dish (like this blue one from my mamasita) and grease it up and add the rest of the dough. I also suggest a candle. Any day, not just on your blogiversary. Celebrate the little things. 🙂

What would YOU like to see here in the upcoming year? More recipes, real life stories, converting of family faves, restaurant or product reviews? You tell ME what you’d like to see more of.

My blogiversary coincides with my brother’s birthday each year — happy birthday, Jamie!