Almond Flour Banana Muffins

Baking almond flour banana muffins has been one of my goals this week. I see that my Favorite Banana Bread Recipe is one of my top posts, and I realized how much I have been missing bread- especially my banana bread! It’s been 90 days today since I started my low carb diet and I am now really starting to miss some of my cheaper recipes: pizza!, bread, pastas, turkey sloppy joe’s… russet potatoes.

Using almond flour instead of regular white flour was a fair compromise. 1/4 cup of almond flour has 6 g of carbs, 6 g protein, and 14 g fat. 1/4 cup of All Purpose bleached flour has no fat, 23 g carbs and 3 g protein….no wonder it’s so cheap. So I did a little bit of research on Pinterest about baking with almond flour, and a few banana bread recipes. After finding a simple one, I compared ratios in my original banana bread recipe to the almond flour recipe and then went to work on converting my recipe to an almond flour one! For the very first try, it was delicious! I can hardly tell that it was a major experiment.

This blog post “How To Bake With Almond Flour {Tips That Will Transform Your Baking}” on Sugar Free Sprinkles was so insightful and I do encourage you to check it out if you’re working through almond flour recipes.

Converting to an Almond Flour Recipe

While I thought that my banana bread recipe was the best and super healthy on account of honey and coconut oil instead of sugar and vegetable oil, I realized that there is actually still a lot of sugar in the batter and therefore isn’t low carb or productive to my overall calorie/macronutrient counting.

3 Challenges to Making the Almond Flour Banana Muffin Recipe

1. Keeping it low carb- so I could actually enjoy it
2. Making it high in protein- or high enough to justify eating 1 serving
3. Making it just sweet enough to not make it taste dull

The recipe I found indeed said that the batter would need 2.5 cups of almond flour (to my 1 3/4 cup of regular flour), oil and a sweetener decreased from my 1/3 cup measurement to 1/4 cup. The recipe I found suggested honey or maple syrup, and 3 ripe bananas…. That is still too much sugar and so many carbs! 😱😱 1 medium banana has 28 g of carbs! So I ‘sacrificed’ my 3 bananas for 2 bananas, and chose to use my Swerve brown sugar to sweeten the batter instead of honey or my sugar-free maple syrup. Swerve is a natural sugar substitute, I bought a pack of 3 from Amazon last month for roughy $20. The order came with powder, brown and white sugar. I’ve already used the white sugar to make peanut butter fat bombs, and it’s so good!

I found the same products at my grocery store and they are like $9 each!

Almond Flour Banana Muffins Recipe

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups Pamela’s Almond Flour 
• 2 bananas
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup Swerve brown sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Butter
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon or Pumpkin Pie Spice
• 1 tsp vanilla 

Equipment

• Kitchen Aid mixer
• Mixing bowls
• Spatula
• Whisk
• Measure spoons and cups
• Muffin pan
• Ice cream scooper (optional)

Directions

• Preheat Oven to 325 degrees
• Place bananas into mixer bowl, use paddle to mash banana into chunks 
• Use spatula to push bananas back down into center of the bowl
• Add eggs, melted oil, brown sugar, and vanilla to bowl. Continue to mix- about 2 or 4 on Kitchen Mixer. Turn mixer off for next step.
• In a separate bowl- Use a whisk to lightly break up the almond flour, add the baking soda, baking powder and salt. 
• 1/2 cup at a time, add the almond flour to the Kitchen mixer and stir it at a 4 or 6 speed. the final 1 cup can be added all at once if desired. 
• Note: The batter will be a little more wet than with regular flour banana bread batter 
• Spray muffin pan with nonstick spray, or use muffin cups
• Use an ice cream scooper to drop batter into the muffin pan
• Batter is a little sticky, maybe use a spoon to make it an even surface in the pan
• Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clear 
• Remove muffin pan from the oven and spread butter on the tops of the muffins and sprinkle salt on the surface (salt optional but delicious)
• Let muffins completely cool before removing them or eating them! For more tips about baking with almond flour, visit this blog post from Sugar Free Sprinkles!
• Makes 12 muffins, 1 serving = 1 muffin

Macronutrients for these Almond Flour Banana Muffins:

• 6 g protein
• 12 g fat
• 10 g carbs 

Other Baking Recipes from The Tiny Twenty-Something