Rustic Banana Muffins

I don't have super awesome memories of my mom's cooking growing up. I was a picky eater who pretty much lived on chicken nuggets, Cheetos and chocolate milk. Plus, both my parents worked full time so slaving over dinner after a long day of work just wasn't a priority. My mom would throw together something like pigs in a blanket or Rice-A-Roni and we'd all eat together in front of All My Children on the VCR. One of our favorite dinners was mac and cheese from the box – but my mom would make it extra special by adding real cheese, that she'd shred herself, to the mix. So, okay, maybe I do have fond memories of my mom's cooking – but it certainly wasn't Pinterest-worthy.

That said, I do have especially fond memories of my mom's baking. Chocolate chip cookies (she mastered that Tollhouse recipe), lemon merengue pie, sugar cookies, oatmeal lace cookies, German pancakes, drop biscuits (which I insisted she make them from scratch even when the out-of-the-can kind came on the market) and finally, banana bread. We'd go through these phases, and still do, where we'd bake one kind of treat every weekend until we completely burned ourselves out... banana bread seemed to make it into the rotation every six months or so.

I'm going through a banana bread phase right now. But since going mostly paleo, sugar-free, and gluten-free my mom's bomb-ass recipe full of refined sugar and bleached flour is out of the question. This recipe is based off of the last banana bread recipe I posted  – but I've modified it even more since last time to be completely grain free and sugar free. I also made these muffins and I love how they're a little rough around the edges like drop biscuits.

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Rustic Banana Muffins (Gluten-free and Sugar-free)
6 very ripe small bananas, mashed
6 tbs. coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup full fat greek yogurt
2 eggs
1 tbs finely grated ginger root
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup almond flour
1 cup coconut flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp sea salt
1 bar dark chocolate, chopped (I use 88% dark chocolate)

Preheat your oven to 350F. 

Mix all your dry ingredients together in a large bowl (almond & coconut flour, baking soda, sea salt, dark chocolate). Then blend all your wet ingredients together in a stand mixer (bananas, oil, yogurt, eggs, ginger root, vanilla extract). Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until all the flour is incorporated and not a second longer. 

Prep a muffin tin by oiling the bottoms and edges of the muffin cups. Drop large spoonfuls of the banana bread mix into the muffin cups. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Let the muffins cool almost completely in the muffin tin on a cooling rack before attempting to pry the muffins out. But you can totally eat one with a fork straight out of the pan if you can't wait to get the muffin in your face (I couldn't). 

Yields 12 muffins. 

NOTE: If you eat sugar these will not be sweet at all. If you would prefer them to taste more like dessert add 1/2 cup of maple syrup to the wet ingredients when baking.