A Healthier Banana Bread + Something Ridiculous

I am moving 225 miles away in 2 weeks and I am stressed.
I am stressed and I am moving 225 miles away in 2 weeks.
I have a hard time turning off my brain when I am stressed and when I am moving 225 miles away in 2 weeks.
Sometimes I sit up in bed and make little notes on my phone when I should be doing anything else.
Thankfully, this is the sort of shit that just won't quit...

And so it was determined that I was going to revamp my mother's banana nut bread recipe to make it...

• healthier
• chock full of other things
• in a motherfucking apple

I think this was the best idea I've ever had in my ever. 

But before we get to that, let's examine how to make a very moist banana nut bread into a very moist and healthy banana nut bread using the stuff I have in my fridge. 

Ingredients

8 tbls tahini

24 packets Truvia

2/3 cups unsweetened applesauce

4 super ripe mashed bananas

3 tbls reduced fat sour cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup oat flour

1 cup vanilla protein powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Quick! Make me 18 or so regular sized Banana Nut Muffins!

Preheat oven to 375. Line your muffin sheet with some muffin papers.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, protein powder, baking soda, and salt to combine. Set aside.

Beat the tahini and truvia in an electric mixer until completely combined. Beat in the applesauce. Beat in the bananas and the sour cream. Add the vanilla. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Add the chopped walnuts and mix by hand with a spoon of your liking. Or a fork. Or a hand. Go nuts. (Get it? GET IT?!?!?)

Fill the muffin papers 1/2 - 2/3 full of batter. Bake for 18 minutes. Eat! EEEEEAT!

Nutritional Information Per Muffin: 130 calories / 18g carbs / 7g fat / 6g protein / 3g fiber / 5g sugar

So that's cool and all. Healthy banana nut bread. Rad, guys, real rad. But I'm bored? And I still have other shit in my fridge? And it was entirely too easy to make a healthier banana nut bread that tastes exactly the same as regular old fatty-4-life banana nut bread. So let's do some add-ons, k? Plus we still have the iphone note to deal with...

If You Want Some Add-Ons, You've Come to the Right Place

Take 1 tsp of peanut butter and plop that sucker 

in the middle of your please-bake-me-soon muffins

Add 30 calories / 1g carb / 3g fat / 1g protein to your serving.

Use 1/2 tsp of peanut butter, 1/2 tsp of mini chocolate chips, and 1/2 a tsp of banana to form a 

little ball of gooey goodness. Drop that little marble from heaven into your unbaked muffin. 

Add 30 calories / 2g carbs / 2g fat / 1g protein / 1g sugar to your serving.  

Slice a few insanely thin slices of banana. Stick them in your 

why-haven’t-you-baked-me-yet muffins. Be artful. I dare you. 

The nutrition facts won’t really change if you’re like me and your slices are crazy thin/borderline meaningless. 

Just throw 1/2 tsp mini dark chocolate chips in (not on, like I did...I’m so ashamed)

your muffin already. You wanted to from the beginning. 

Add 11 calories / 1g carb / 1g fat / 1g sugar to your serving.

now onto why we were all put on this earth by a higher baking-soda-not-yeast-based bread...

BANANA NUT BREAD BAKED IN AN APPLE

IF YOU'RE DOWN FOR IT,

I highly suggest baking some banana nut bread in a motherfucking apple. I used a fiji apple, cored it down to like half an inch from the bottom, and carefully scooped out a substantial part of the inside flesh of the apple. I left probably a half an inch wall at most. I'd say half the apple was removed. Fill your apple 2/3 full - mine fit about 2 muffins-worth. Place in a baking dish with a half inch or so of water in it. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the top of the banana bread seems set and a toothpick comes out clean.

Estimated Nutrition Facts Per Baked Apple Banana Nut Bread Amazing Thing: 310 calories / 46g carbs / 14g fat / 12g protein / 8g fat / 18g sugar

RATE ME!!!

TASTE: 7/5 Yeah. I went there. I don't even need to explain it but I have never, ever, ever in my life minced words. I have minced everything (EVERYTHING!) else. The regular banana nut muffins are really yummy and taste exactly like the fatty version. So, you know, go team. But I ate half of the baked apple banana nut bread and, um, I don't want to ever go back to the person I was before eating that half of a banana nut bread baked in an apple.

EASE: 4/5 The hardest part is coring the apple. And saying "goodbye."

FILTH OF THE KITCHEN: 4/5 So when I opened the jar of tahini I didn't realize it was the kind with the oil on the top that needed to be stirred and so, blah blah blah, I have a really shiny complexion. As does my floor. And my oven. And my stroke-y dog.

DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH? At one point, the dog emerged from the closet his office to stare me down and make weird noises. I'm pretty sure he knew something special was going on. Or he was having a stroke. Dunno.

IMPRESS-O-METER: I explained the dessert to the Impress-O-Meter who told me "HOLD THE PHONE." And then it looked sternly at me through the googly eyes I hot glued to its impress-o-face and said "forever."

Post-Workout Cookie Sandwiches Revisited

I gave my I'm-Real-Beat-From-Running-Someone-Get-This-Girl-A-Cookie-Sandwich recipe a moderate facelift yesterday. It's the same basic idea, just a few ingredient replacement. So here goes it!

Ingredients

1/2 cup vanilla protein powder (use a soy-based powder for vegan)

1/3 cup oat flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

4oz fresh ground almond butter

18 packets Truvia

1/4 to 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbls instant espresso powder

1 1/2 cups oats

1/2 cup mini dark chocolate chips

Do These Things Now

Whisk your protein powder, oat flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder together in a bowl. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, "cream" the almond butter, applesauce and truvia til smooth. Add the tsp of vanilla and the espresso powder. Mix some more. Add the dry ingredient mixture a half a cup at a time. It should seem pretty dry. If it seems too dry, add a bit more applesauce. Add the vanilla and espresso powder. Smoooooth. Fold in the oats and the chocolate chips.

Divide the dough in half. Take one half and plop it down on some wax paper. Wrap it up like a tootsie roll and roll it out into a log. It should be about an inch and half or so in diameter. Wrap tightly in the wax paper and let cool in the fridge for 4-6 hours. Repeat with remaining half of dough.

4-6 hours/one reading of The Hunger Games later...

Preheat the oven to 350. Line some cookie sheets with parchment paper. Take your doughy logs out of the fridge. Slice the logs into thinnish cookie disks no bigger than a half an inch wide. If they crack a bit, you can always reform them with a little of the fallen off dough. Press the disks down onto the cookie sheets, making them just a tad slimmer and peanut butter spreading friendlier. Add fallen apart dough as needed. Bake for 9 minutes. Remove and cool for a minute or 2 on the sheets, then transfer to cooling racks.

Assembly!

This is pretty straightforward. If it isn't, I'm afraid of how you got this far and no, this is not a pie recipe. Take one cookie. Spread a tablespoon of your favorite chunky peanut butter on the smooth bottom side. Top with another cookie's smooth bottom side. Giggle about "smooth bottom sides."

Nutrition Facts

Per cookie 

50 calories / 6g carbs / 3g fat / 2g protein / 1g fiber / 0g sugar

(based off the recipe making the 42 cookies I made)

Per cookie sandwich with a tablespoon of Maranatha No Stir Crunchy Peanut Butter

190 calories / 16g carbs / 14g fat / 8g protein / 3g fiber / 3g sugar

Healthy Little Muffins

Hey there Healthy Little Muffin, you wanna hang out before work?
Maybe after the gym?
Do you want to be my everything?
My one and only?

I want you inside me.

Recently, I've been having this kinda weird love affair with protein and fiber. I eat double fiber bread. I drink protein shakes. I nibble on Fiber Choice tablets. Protein bars? We've shared some romantic evenings.

Tonight was the final straw. I bought dried prunes and figs at Whole Foods. Wholesale. I know. I'm really passionate about pooping.

So making a muffin that will make you poop, give you energy, and maybe even taste halfway decent seemed like the obvious next step. Because cookies would have been stupid. Please. What is this, amateur night?

No #2 has ever tasted so much a winner.

It's official. This is not amateur night.

Here's the rundown on this recipe since I sorta kinda whipped it up out of my kitchen:

Ingredients


Almost 1/2 cup superfine sugar + 2 packets of Truvia (I ran out of sugar...then I ran out of superfine sugar...this was almost amateur night...)
2 tbs butter
2 eggs
1 cup of fat free sour cream
2 cups of old fashioned oats
1/2 cup of oat flour
1/2 Oh Yeah! Cookies and Cream Protein Powder (why wouldn't I buy the only brand with an exclamation point in the name?)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 remaining dried figs, chopped
2 remaining dried prunes, chopped

You're This Close to a Fantastic Bowel Movement


Preheat oven to 425. That seems super hot, I know.

1. Cream butter and sugar in your mixer. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat til brutalized.
2. Toss the sour cream and oats in a bowl to combine. Add them to your mixer and beat beat beat.
3. In a separate bowl (I plan to get your whole kitchen filthy), mix the dry ingredients.
4. Add the dry ingredients to your wet ones and mix on low until smoothish.
5. Douse your muffin pan with baking spray.
6. Evenly distribute the muffin batter into the 12 muffin tin. Add the random dried fruit you had left over into as many of the muffin pods you want. Be creative! Make a smiley fig face! Do not make a frowny fig face!
7. Stick it in the oven for 10 mins. Then reconsider how fucking hot that oven is. Turn it down to 375. Give it another 6 minutes. They look done? Sure, sure.
8. Let cool.
9. Allow yourself to enjoy how wonderfully the smell of muffins covers the smell of that entire bag of steamed spinach you whipped up earlier for dinner. Shhh...muffin time.

If my intestines were superhuman,
I'd eat every one of you, baby.

But wait!

I even have the nutrition facts for these little fuckers! These numbers may not seem like much but with such a low calorie count, I think they are moderately impressive. You get your fiber from the oats and oat flour and you could always add more prunes or figs to get a much more substantial amount. The protein obviously comes from the protein powder (per serving, it's one of the lower calorie, higher protein, lower carb ones available), the eggs, sour cream, oats, and oat flour.

Healthy Little Muffins 
nutrition facts per muffin


cal: 152
carbs: 22g
fat: 4g
protein: 7g
fiber: 2g
sodium: 249mg


RATE ME!!!


TASTE: 3.5/5 These muffins are really yummy and perfectly breakfast-y. I will say, they do taste healthier than gluttonous. But I think that's a positive thing? They are plenty moist thanks to the sour cream and the cookies and cream protein powder actually tastes really good on its own so it's only uplifted by the addition of oats. I am a really big fan of everything I am tasting in these muffins. And they had the potential to be terrifyingly bad.

EASE: 5/5 I just want to make a poop joke here so bad. So I will. The only thing easier will be passing my next bowel movement. HELLO.

FILTH OF THE KITCHEN: 3/5 I used alllllll the bowls in my kitchen. But to be fair, I have like 3-4 bowls in my kitchen. USE ALL THE BOWLS.

DID THE DOG EAT THE DOUGH?: The dog got a bath earlier tonight. The dog wishes he was dead still.

IMPRESS-O-METER: 4.75/5 Excuse me, I made healthy muffins with protein powder that actually taste fantastic. Where's my ticker tape parade? When will all this fist pumping I've done tonight be appreciated? Soon. So soon.



I have to go to the bathroom now.