Banana Mmmmmuffins

By Lauren

You’ve been trying to stick to that New Year’s resolution like it is your job. You are going to eat healthy if it kills you, damn it. So, instead of stocking your fridge with beer and baked goods, you loaded up on fruits, vegetables…and beer. But, no matter how hard you try, bananas just aren’t as appetizing post-bar as, say, a giant pizza.

And where does that leave you? With some over-priced brown ‘nanas, that’s where. What is a college-girl on a budget to do? How do super low-fat, super tasty banana muffins sound? Too good to be true? Try again:

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup Splenda No Calorie Sweetener (granulated)

1 1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 bananas)

1/2 cup fat-free liquid egg substitute (like Egg Beaters)

1/2 cup no-sugar-added applesauce

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine both types of flour, Splenda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon (in other words, all dry ingredients). In a separate bowl, mix together the mashed bananas, egg substitute, applesauce, and vanilla extract (all the wet ingredients).

Add this mixture to the bowl with the dry ingredients, and stir until just blended. Proceed with caution: the batter is mighty tasty, so stay strong or you will end up muffin-less.

Spoon batter into a muffin tin (should make 12 perfect-sized muffins) sprayed with nonstick spray.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. It may be hard – the smell alone will make you weak in the knees – but let those puppies cool a little before stuffing your face. (Which you can do, as each muffin only has about 100 calories!)

Healthy and delicious. That resolution may not be so hard, after all.

(A special thanks to my homegirl, Hungry Girl, for this amazing recipe. It changed my life.)