Banana Oat Muffins

We buy a lot of bananas in our house but often end up not finishing the bunch before they over ripen. I typically toss those ones into the freezer until I feel like baking but upon my freezer tidy earlier this week I realized I had a dozen bananas taking up space in a corner. A double batch of something was in order so I flipped through my favorite muffin cookbook (Pilsbury best Muffins and Quickbreads) for inspiration. I tweaked the recipe by upping the cinnamon, and skipping the topping (unneeded extra sugar). I've also made these muffins with some of the all purpose flour subbed out for whole wheat flour with great success.

Banana Oat Muffins (makes 24)
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup sugar
5 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
4 medium bananas (thawed and mashed)
1 cup buttermilk*
6 tbsp vegetable oil
2 eggs

*While not a decent substitute for all recipes, when baking you can replace buttermilk with a self soured version. Simply add 1.5 tsp vinegar (or lemon juice) per 1/2 cup milk and let sit for a minute to sour.

Preheat oven to 400 F and spray muffins tins with nonstick cooking spray.

Combine all dry ingredients in large bowl until well blended. In a smaller bowl, mix bananas, buttermilk, oil and eggs. Beat well.

Add wet mixture to dry ingredients and stir until just combined. A bit of dry stuff still there is fine. You don't want to over mix muffins or they get a little tough and get those super pointed tops.

Fill muffin cups 3/4 full and bake for 15-18 minutes or until toothpick inserted in a muffins comes out clean. Let sit in pan for 1 minutes and then remove to rack to cool.

Banana Oat Muffins

Store in a tight closing container or freeze (I usually freeze 8 muffins from a batch of 24 so we always have baked goods handy). Four muffins to a ziplock freezer bag works great for us.