My weekly routine inevitably changed when Miss C started pre-school and I increased my work hours, and I feel as if I’ve been trying to find the “new normal” ever since. The days are quite frantic, as I work out who needs to be where, with what, and when (all while desperately hoping that I don’t mess things up and forget a school pick-up!).
To try and streamline things, I’ve changed from little grocery shops throughout the week to (hopefully) a big shop once per week. This is working quite well, although the rate at which my girls consume yoghurt has meant there have been a few emergency yoghurt dashes.
And, on occasion, the bananas that I bought at the start of the week do not look so fantastic at the end of the week. But we all know that overripe bananas can be perfect for baking – with the added bonus that a healthy baked treat makes a perfect school lunch-box addition.
On this occasion, I had two quite sad looking bananas taking up my fruit bowl. A quick rustle through the pantry revealed that we also had coconut and honey.
And so these little banana-coconut beauties came to be.
I used smaller patty cases, which yielded around 20 – and the whole batch took only 20 minutes or so to make – from start to finish.
I kept some out for the next few days, and froze the others in bags of two for future lunch-box additions.
Miss C wolfed down a few as soon as the came out of the oven, without noticing that I’d reduced the sugar content – so I’m calling it a kid snack win!
Coco-Banana Muffins – makes 20 small muffins
- 2 cups self raising flour
- 1/2 tsp bicarb soda
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup caster sugar
- 1/2 cup coconut
- 1/3 cup coconut oil
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 tbs honey
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 bananas, mashed
- Preheat oven to 180C, and line a couple muffin pans with paper cases.
- Sift the flour, bicarb soda and cinnamon into a large bowl. Stir through the salt, sugar and coconut.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the coconut oil, milk, honey, eggs, vanilla extract and banana until well combined.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and stir until just combined.
- Divide between paper cases and bake for 12-15 minutes.
(As I mentioned, I made 20 smaller muffins. If you wanted to make bigger muffins, just allow a little longer cooking time).
What about you? What’s your favourite way to use up leftover bananas?
I rarely buy bananas now because I may not eat them before they start to over ripen. I haven’t baked since 1995 so I would end up throwing them away and I don’t want to do that. I like bananas and I suppose I should just buy one or two on a Saturday and have them as a weekend treat.
Yum!! These look really good. I sometime stick them in a high speed blender to make a banana ice cream. Hubby adores it and sometimes I add honey but if they’re really ripe the bananas sometimes don’t need it.