Pumpkin Banana Muffins (with a Cocoa Surprise!)

I made these muffins for our Thanksgiving breakfast, but to be honest, I think they’re going to get devoured before Thanksgiving rolls around this Thursday. The house smelled so good while these were baking in the oven!

The original recipe for these Pumpkin Banana Muffins comes from Trader Joe’s, but of course you are not limited to using their ingredients. I substituted my own homemade pumpkin butter instead of theirs. If you’re looking for tasty pastries to start your day but are worried about the carbs or extra sugar, don’t worry because these muffins use NO FLOUR, NO BUTTER, and NO ADDED SUGAR. And they still come out tasty and rise in the oven just fine!

Of course, I was worried about the men in the family eating these because they’re not very fond of pumpkin. Lately they’ve been expressing this to me because I have an abundance of pumpkin puree in the freezer and have been looking for new recipes to try with it. So, I added cocoa powder to 1/3 of the batter to give these muffins a chocolate-y surprise in the center. This is of course optional and you can skip this step if you want to — but who can resist chocolate?

Pumpkin Banana Muffins

Makes 1 dozen muffins.

Ingredients

• 3 cups almond meal
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup pumpkin butter (see recipe here!)
• 2 very ripe bananas
• Optional: 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• Optional: 1 heaping tsp of cocoa powder

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine the almond meal and baking soda. Whisk eggs in a separate bowl. Add pumpkin butter to eggs and stir thoroughly until combined. Add the wet mixture to the almond meal and mix together to create a batter. Mash bananas and fold into the batter.
3. Optional: Separate 1/3 of the batter and mix with cocoa powder. You can also add vanilla extract to the non-cocoa batter for extra flavor.
4. Now, scoop the batter into the muffin tins. I like to bake using paper cups but if you don’t, make sure to grease your muffin tin well. If you are making the muffins with a chocolate center, then layer your muffins by adding a scoop of regular batter, then a small scoop of chocolate batter in the middle, then top it off with another scoop of regular batter. If you’re skipping the cocoa, then simply distribute the batter evenly amongst the 13 muffin cups. You can also add your toppings now if you’d like!
5. Bake for 35 minutes.
6. Enjoy with a cup of hot coffee or tea. Yum!

Happy Thanksgiving!