Easy Freezy Mini Muffins

These muffins are flourless and sweetened with honey. They freeze well and are easy to pack straight from the freezer into a sack lunch. By lunchtime, they will be thawed and ready to eat!

I personally love these muffins warm from the oven. On very busy days, I will sometimes make a big batch and we will have them for breakfast and then again for lunch! I hope you love them as much as we have.

Ingredients:

  • 1 banana
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 c. peanut butter (heaping). If you are using sweetened peanut butter, your muffins will be sweeter than mine.
  • 3 T. honey (optional)
  • 1/4 t. baking soda
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 T. vanilla
  • 1/2 c. chocolate chips (If you are using homemade chips, I recommend freezing them before mixing them in.)

Start by preheating the oven to 400°F. Prepare a mini muffin tin. I love using unbleached parchment paper liners because I feel like they work the best. At this point, if you are using homemade chocolate chips that are a little soft like mine, throw 1/2 cup of them into the freezer. Freezing them makes them easier to mix in.

In a blender, mix together 1 banana, 1 egg, 1/2 c. (heaping) peanut butter, 3 T. honey (optional), 1/4 t. baking soda, 1 T. vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Mix until smooth then transfer batter to a mixing bowl and stir in 1/2 c. of chocolate chips.

Fill the muffin cups 3/4 full and bake for 8-9 minutes or until golden brown. Enjoy these warm or let them cool and freeze them!

Note on the ingredients: I aim for using the healthiest and most sustainable ingredients I can. I realize that we are not always able to use our favorite ingredients, but for those moments when you have the time, the resources, and the energy, here are a few suggestions.

1. Use organic bananas that have fully ripened, to the point that a few brown speckles are on them. Green bananas have more starch which does not digest as quickly. For most, this may not be a problem. For those following a GAPS diet, starch is no bueno.

2. Use cage free organic eggs. Backyard chickens are my favorite source. They are fun and easy to care for. Be sure you research the topic a lot before going out and buying chicks though!

3. Use organic unsweetened peanut butter without additives. I use the kind that you find at some stores with a machine that squishes the peanut butter up right before your eyes.

4. Use gluten free pure baking soda.

5. Use a natural, unprocessed salt, like Redmond Salt. It has more minerals!

6. Use local raw honey. Some are concerned with the safety of raw honey, so research this before making your decision. We choose local raw honey to help with seasonal allergies. Consider putting a bee hive in your yard! You need to research this too. We needed a license for ours and a little pond as a water source. It was fun for the kids when we got to harvest our own honey!

7. Homemade chocolate chips are actually pretty easy to make. Try it sometime!

8. Homemade vanilla is also super easy to make, although it does have to sit for a long time.

This mini muffin recipe was inspired by Averie Cooks. With a few changes, it has become a family fav.

Kale Chips

These crunchy kale chips are so yummy that I prefer them to popcorn or potato chips. I am not kidding! The kids love them too, and they make a perfect snack or side dish for lunch. They get eaten so fast that it is hard to stock up on them though.

I started with 2 bunches of organic kale from the store plus a little bit from my garden. Any type of curly leafed kale will do.. I washed it, removed the spines, and dried the leaves very well because the flavor sauce won’t stick to wet leaves.

To dry my leaves quickly, I aimed a personal fan on them until they dried.

In my Vitamix, I blended 1 c. of cashews, 1/2 of a red bell pepper, 1 t garlic powder, 2 t onion powder, 2 t sea salt, 1/3 c nutritional yeast, 4 T olive oil, 1 squeeze of lemon juice, and 1/4 to 1/2 c water (you need enough water to get it to mix up but not so much that it makes it runny). BTW, making your own homemade garlic and onion powder from dehydrated garlic and onions is easy to do and would make these even better!

I then put all my kale in a bowl and poured the sauce over it. I rubbed the sauce, gently sort of massaging it around on all the leaves. This serves to distribute the sauce and soften the fibrous parts.

My recipe for Kale Chips was inspired by this recipe from Little Green Dot. The recipe is mostly the same, with just a few changes of my own.

Once the sauce is generously covering all the leaves, arrange them in a single layer on your dehydrator tray and let them go until they are crunchy. Keeping the temp around 135°F is best for preserving nutritional qualities.

Final product!

After you have made these and your family has devoured them, read this list of the benefits of kale and give yourself a pat on the back 🙂.