I know I knowwww.. I bake all the time!  Anyone who knows me know about my love for baking & eating baked stuff!!! In fact, if you keep following me here, you might as well believe this to be a baking blog!! 😀

So after disguising myself behind the first 2 posts of salad and appetizer, I decided to come out with this skinny cherry banana muffin recipe.

If you like to kick-start your day with something sweet then these muffins are just what you want! I love muffins and making them a teensy bit healthier is so easy to do. I love to bake them in a small batch of 6 to last me for a couple of days. I can grab one on the way to work and later snack on one after I get home. They are pretty convenient and I don’t feel guilty at all digging in. 😉

Healthy recipes that do not taste healthy at all is like finding a treasure!

I loooveee helthifying recipes as that is the only way I can have them too much! 😛 Plus, these muffins are insanely easy to make. If they weren’t, you can bet all your money that I wouldn’t have baked them on a weekday! Oh yeah, they are that easy and quick to whip up!

Start with some of your wet ingredients: unsweetened Applesauce, some sugar, mashed banana, low-fat buttermilk and vanilla extract. Applesauce is taking the place of butter and oil in this recipe as there is simply no need for the added fat. And min you, if you think these are gonna be dry and crumbly without butter and egg then you are mistaken! I can’t stress enough that these are NOT anything like that. All the wet ingredients mentioned above do a fine job of keeping the baked muffins soft, tender and moist.

There is only 1/4 cup of white sugar in the whole recipe, yielding 6 large muffins. So you get my point when I am repeatedly saying these are extremely healthy and still decadent tasting!

The dry ingredients are simple: whole wheat flour, quick-cooking oats and your leavening agents. You can sift the flour before mixing it with wet ingredients. This step is not necessary and you can skip it.

And the last thing you add? Cherries of course! I used glazed cherries cut into bite size pieces but you can easily replace them with fresh or canned cherries. Plus, a sprinkle of walnuts just before popping them into oven.

These muffins taste great with the cup of milk or coffee!

The muffins take an easy 18-20 minutes in the oven. Mine took 20 minutes. Be careful with these though, you don’t want to overbake them, which will lead  to dry, course muffins. Insert a toothpick in one at the 18 minutes mark. If it comes out clean, they are ready. If not, bake for 2 more minutes.

Today’s recipe is perfectly healthy and quick to prepare as no mixer required,  practically taking 10 minutes to prepare the batter. Okay, I’m done convincing you. Make these!! 🙂

Skinny Cherry Banana Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Applesauce
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 medium over ripe mashed banana
• 1/4 cup low-fat buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup quick-cooking oats
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 15-20 glazed cherries, chopped into bite size pieces
• 2 Tbsp chopped walnuts

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF/180ºC. Line 6-count muffin pan with liners.
2. In a large bowl, combine apple sauce, sugar, mashed banana, buttermilk and vanilla. Whisk them all together until smooth.
3. In a small bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking soda and salt. Slowly stir in to the wet ingredients , being careful not to overmix. Get any dry pocket of flour out. Fold in the cherries. The batter will be smooth but not too runny.
4. Fill paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full. Sprinkle with walnuts. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
5. Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes before removing them from pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe source: http://cookbybook.wordpress.com