Snacktime Favorite- Chocolate Banana Flax Muffins!

If there's one thing that Team Toba Softball loves...it's finding a healthy snack that tastes like it's not too healthy.  We've shown you the energy bites on the blog...and now we have something else for you to try- Chocolate Banana Flax Muffins!  Coach Haylee brought these to our Saturday night training session at Southport on the weekend and they were a huge hit- and now we will share all of our secrets with you :)

See Tori clapping for the muffins in the background?!  Or she's putting on hand sani...

This recipe comes courtesy of a baking blog called The Butter Half, and when I made them tonight I had a few adaptations from the original, which you can find HERE.

The cool thing about these muffins is that you can make them in a blender!  Although I did find it was a bit difficult to get the last of the batter out from between the blades.

Here's all of the ingredients that you'll need (I forgot the vanilla in the picture):

1 1/2 cups white or whole wheat flour (I used 1/2 cup whole wheat and 1 cup white)

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup ground flax seed

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream (or Greek yogurt)

2 eggs

1/2 cup honey (or maple syrup)

2 ripe bananas

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips (any kind, peanut butter would also be delish...)

First, pre-heat your oven to 350F.  Get your muffin tins ready- we found through extensive research on The Google (and from snack break on Saturday) that muffins without a lot of fat in them tend to stick to paper cups.  You might want to try they foil-lined cups or what I did was use silicon muffin trays and liners- and they worked great.

Here's all you have to do- mix up all of your dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  Put all of the wet ingredients in the blender (not the chocolate chips though!) and whizz it around for about a minute until it's kind of frothy.  Add the dry mixture slowly and pulse it a few times until it's all incorporated.  I had to take a long spoon and stir it up because I just have an average blender, but if you have a crazy Vitamix or Ninja, then it will probably do the whole job for you.  Don't overmix because that's when your muffins get tough.  Add in about half of the chocolate chips and incorporate them into the batter.

Fill your muffin cups about 3/4 full and then add 4-5 chocolate chips to the top.  Bake for 10-15 minutes until a tester comes out clean.  Cool in the pans for about 15 minutes then put on a wire rack to cool completely.

This is Mr. Linus Feta Adams, my kitchen supervisor, reminding me not to skimp on the chocolate chips.

Voila!  If you have a look at the ingredients, there is minimal added sugar (this recipe makes about 18 muffins), there is flax which is super healthy, you get to use up your old bananas that are way past their prime and you can make a couple of easy substitutions depending on what you have in your fridge and pantry.

Nom, nom, nom..