Chocolate chip banana oat muffins

We eat a lot of bananas in my house, but I like them almost green. Once they start looking like this:

...my family knows they're getting some muffins!

There are a million ways you can (and I have) modified this recipe, but let's start with the basics.

mushed up bananas

WET ingredients:
3 bananas all mushed up until it's banana goo (I just put them in my mixing bowl and let the electric mixer do the work)
1 egg
1/3 cup oil
1 t. vanilla extract
1 c. milk (y'all know I only use sugar free almond milk, but any milk will do)

DRY ingredients:
1 1/2 c. flour
1 cup old-fashioned oats
2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
pinch salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 t. cinnamon (optional)
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all the wet ingredients well in a mixing bowl. Less mess if you add a little at a time, but your choice!
Dry ingredients come next and I cheat and do it right on top of the wet, but just make sure you get the baking soda and powder all mixed nicely with the flour so the magic happens.

I just put all the dry ingredients on top the wet and carefully mixed the baking powder/soda together with a fork rather than messing up another bowl.

Now...mix the chocolate chips, dry and wet ingredients all up but as little as possible, just until mixed. Muffins are a "quick bread" in cooking terms and quick breads become overly dense and don't poof up all nice if you mix them up too much.

Just until blended - that's about right!

I use an ice-cream scoop to neatly fill 12 muffin cups and they fill up pretty full. Bake about 14 minutes, but just check for them to be lightly brown and a toothpick comes out clean. After you get the hang of it, you don't need to waste toothpicks and you can just touch it, but that's harder to describe. You'll get it. I know this won't be the last time you make these guys. Trust me.

Using my ice-cream scoop to fill the cups

ready to go in that 400 degree oven!

Variations:

Vegan: omit the egg using chia or flax seeds (see my GF Blueberry Banana Muffins recipe) and use almond or coconut milk. Of course, you'll have to get you some special vegan chocolate chips too. Or just use 1 cup of blueberries instead!

you can grind them up (probably works better) or microwave them 20 seconds and let soak 5-10 minutes

Guess which I did? Easy route for sure, nuked em. See the gel?

Low fat: use 1/4 c. oil instead, or walk on the wild side and leave it out altogether and just use an extra banana! I think they're better with some oil in there though :) Just a tad dense and moist without it.

Low sugar: use 1/4 c. 100% fruit juice concentrate instead of the 1/2 cup of sugar. Or just use 1/4 cup of the sugar. Who am I kidding, I've forgotten the sugar before and they were good - the chocolate chips do the job! I think you need at least a little though or they are a bit bland.

Ch-ch-ch-chia!: Put a couple tablespoons of chia or flax seeds for some added nutrition.

Now you get to see the final product! (err...umm...that is if like me you can't ever follow a recipe and you always have to change things up...I used 1/4 c. 100% grape raspberry juice concentrate instead of the sugar, 1/4 c. organic coconut oil and the chia egg thing instead of the egg.

I put them on a piece of foil on a baking rack to cool

tear into them- you know you wanna!

These are a little flatter than if you follow the recipe as-is but I was going for a little less sugar and fat. Mix it up!