Banana Protein Muffins & Vegan Variation

What to do with all that pulp leftover from juicing? Throw it away? I think not! I have a whole list of ways I plan on using this stuff!

 Like throwing it into my protein muffins. Whenever I have old brown bananas, this is what we make. I USED to make delicious sugary banana bread, but as I strive to change the way I eat,  I have discovered that finding healthy alternatives is mandatory for success. And now I actually like these muffins better than the way I used to make banana bread. The texture is moist and dense and it has just the right amount of sweetness, all without using oil, white flour, or refined sugar. Even the kids (who have no idea how healthy it is) go BANANAS for this recipe and will eat 3 in a row without batting an eye.

Banana Protein Muffins

1Cup Rolled Oats, ground in a food processor or blender

1/3 Cup Almond Meal

1tsp Baking Soda (this is a must! otherwise the muffins turn out too heavy and dense)

1 egg

1 Scoop Vanilla Protein Powder 

3/4 Cup Rice milk (coconut or almond milk will work too)

1/2 Cup Stevia in the Raw

1-2 Bananas

leftover pulp from Juicing

Preheat oven to 350 F and spray or line a muffin pan. Put oats in a food processor or blender and give them a whirl till they resemble a coarse powder (it doesn't have to be very fine). Then throw in the rest of the ingredients and process until everything is combined. The batter should not be too thick or thin, maybe slightly thicker than you would make pancake batter. You can always add more milk if it needs to thin out. Using 1/4 measuring cup, fill each muffin tin with batter. I usually get about 9-10 muffins from this recipe, it really depends on how many bananas you decide to use and how much of the leftover pulp was added. You could even use 2 scoops of protein powder if you want to up the protein content. Sometimes I use more oats or add flax seed or throw in applesauce if my banana seems kinda small. I love this recipe because you can pretty much tweak it however you want, which brings me to the vegan variation...

I made this recipe by ACCIDENT! I was making muffins one day and decided to throw some spinach into the recipe. I blended everything together, put them into the muffin tins (noticed that for some reason it only made 8 this time haha), and threw it into the oven. A few minutes later I realized I completely forgot to add the egg and protein powder! They still turned out really yummy and the kids still gobbled them up like there was no tomorrow:)

Vegan Banana Muffins

1Cup Rolled Oats, ground in a food processor or blender

1/3 Cup Almond Meal

1tsp Baking Soda (this is a must! otherwise the muffins turn out too heavy and dense) 

3/4 Cup Rice milk (coconut or almond milk will work too)

1/2 Cup Stevia in the Raw

1-2 Bananas

Big handful of spinach and/or leftover pulp from Juicing

Make the same as the other recipe except I processed the spinach with the oats before adding the other ingredients (to make sure it was chopped up nice and good).