Recipe | Banana, raisin, oat and honey muffins

An easy recipe for banana, raisin, oat and honey muffins. No mixer required.

I found this recipe for easy banana, raisin, oat and honey muffins at delicious. They are a tasty way of using up overripe bananas and a good breakfast muffin option.

This is a particularly good recipe if you don’t have a stand mixer or electric beaters to help you as there’s not a lot of stirring involved.

Ingredients (12 banana, raisin, oat and honey muffins):

200 g / 7 oz wholemeal flour (plain flour will work fine!)
50 g / 1.8 oz porridge oats (and a few more to sprinkle over the top of the muffins before baking)
1.5 tsp baking powder
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda (aka baking soda)
70 g / 2.5 oz raisins (or sultanas), roughly chopped
2 large or medium eggs, beaten
100 ml / 3.4 fl oz vegetable oil
100 g / 3.5 oz natural yoghurt
2 ripe bananas, mashed
4 tsp clear honey

Method:

Put muffin cases in a 12-hole muffin tin. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees C fan)/ Gas Mark 4/ 356 degrees F.

Weigh the flour, oats, baking powder, bicarb and raisins into a large bowl. I gave them a gentle mix to coat the chopped raisins in the dry ingredients. This stops them sticking together and so prevents them bunching up inside your muffins. Put this bowl to one side.

In a medium-sized bowl, weigh/measure out the oil, yoghurt, mashed bananas, honey and eggs. Stir until combined. Don’t worry if it’s a bit of a lumpy mixture – the bananas are never going to mash to a completely smooth paste!

Pour the wet ingredients into your dry ingredients. Mix them together gently using a wooden spoon, folding the mixture. Don’t overdo the stirring, but do check you don’t have any pockets of flour hiding at the bottom of the bowl. I admit that the mixture at this point doesn’t look that appetising:

Divide the banana, raisin, oat and honey muffin mixture equally into your 12 muffin cases. If you like, sprinkle a few oats over the top of each of the muffins before putting them in the oven.

Bake for 25 minutes. However, if your oven tends to the hot side (which mine does), I’d check them after 20 minutes. If they’ve risen, turned golden brown, don’t wobble and a knife poked into the middle of a muffin comes out clean, they’re done and you can take them out. If you want to be extra sure they’re baked, turn the oven off and leave them in for another 5 minutes just to be safe.

Leave the banana, raisin and honey muffins to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack to finish cooling completely.

The muffins will keep up to 3 days in an airtight container stored in a cool dry place.

My greatest struggle making these muffins was when chopping the raisins. I had a small “helper” who insisted on sampling them. I’m surprised there were any left to go into the mixture! Exhibit A: