These healthy banana date oat muffins will quickly become a staple in your kitchen. Made with oatmeal, banana, dates, cinnamon and some brown sugar for sweetness, these muffins are hearty and delicious with every bite.
There are so many ways to use bananas in muffins. For example, these banana ricotta muffins are rich and creamy. These banana carrot muffins are healthy and filling. These banana and white chocolate muffins taste like dessert. These banana and pear muffins are perfect for fall. And these banana almond flour muffins are great for a gluten-free muffin recipe.
You might’ve thought dates don’t work in muffins, but they are actually amazing! The oatmeal adds a nice, subtle texture and flavor that is perfectly complemented with the banana and dates. Plus, they’re a great way to use up giant Costco size bags of dates.
These muffins come together quickly. It is easy to whip up a batch in 30 minutes, and after baking and cleaning up, everything can be done in under an hour. Which means there is never a reason not to have freshly baked muffins for breakfast!
If you love healthy muffins you may also like these Orange Almond Muffins or these Pear and Blueberry Muffins.
Banana Date Oat Muffin Ingredients:
- Banana — You just need one banana for this recipe. Brown/black bananas add the most moisture and best taste to the muffins.
- Dates — I use dried dates for this recipe. Since they are being baked, you don’t need to use fresh dates — save fresh dates for eating fresh.
- Oats — I use steel cut oats because I prefer the texture with these muffins, but you could use regular rolled oats too.
- Brown sugar — For a bit of sweetness. These muffins are perfect with brown sugar rather than granulated sugar.
- Butter — you can substitute with margarine if you like.
- Cinnamon — for a little bit of flavor.
- Egg, salt, baking soda, baking powder, milk — regular baking ingredients.
How to store:
Store any leftover banana, date and oat muffins in a seal container in the fridge for up to a week. You can warm up a muffin for ~20 seconds in the microwave if you like to eat them warm and serve with a small amount of butter.
📖 Recipe
Banana Date Oat Muffins
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 12 muffins 1x
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
These healthy banana date oat muffins will quickly become a staple in your kitchen. Made with oatmeal, banana, dates, cinnamon and some brown sugar for sweetness, these muffins are hearty and delicious with every bite.
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cup dates
- 1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup steel cut oats
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp salt
- ⅔ cup butter, melted and slightly cooled
- ½ cup brown sugar, packed
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup milk
- 1 banana, mashed
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400F. Grease a 12 muffin tin or line with muffin liners.
- Soak the dates in hot water (not boiling water — just hot water from the tap is fine). Set aside.
- In a large bowl, mix the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter and brown sugar together. Beat in the egg and milk. Mix in the mashed banana until well combined.
- Once the dates have been soaking for about 10-15 minutes, remove and dry them. Then roughly chop them into chunks.
- Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing only until just combined. Gently fold in the dates.
- Evenly divide the batter into 12 muffin tins. As soon as you place the muffins in the oven, reduce the temperature to 350F. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
Notes
- You can use regular rolled oats instead of steel cut oats if that is what you prefer. I just like the texture of the steel cut oats best in these muffins.
- Store leftovers in a sealed container in the fridge for up to a week.
- Prep Time: 25 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Category: Muffins
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 muffin
- Calories: 270
- Sugar: 14g
- Sodium: 189mg
- Fat: 12.2g
- Saturated Fat: 6.9g
- Unsaturated Fat: 3.9g
- Trans Fat: 0.4g
- Carbohydrates: 38.2g
- Fiber: 3.4g
- Protein: 4.6g
- Cholesterol: 43.8mg
Annie
I made a vegan version of these and they were super good! I substituted the egg for a flax egg (1 tblsp of flaxseed meal and 3 tblspns water) and the milk for hemp milk (I’m sure any type of plant milk would work) and it worked super well!
The Littlest Crumb
So happy you enjoyed them Annie! Such a great idea for a vegan substitution — I’ll have to try this too! 🙂
Johanna
Do you need to soak or boil the steel cut oats?
The Littlest Crumb
Hi Johanna! Thanks for the question and sorry for the confusion! I will edit the recipe to be a bit clearer. For this recipe, I use quick cooking steel cut oats — the ‘quick cooking’ part is the key. I’ve found quick cooking steel cuts oats work perfectly well without cooking in advance for this muffin recipe. However, if you are not using quick cooking steel cut oats, you do need to pre-cook them according to the package instructions.
Even if you have quick cooking steel cut oats, you may still choose to pre-cook them based on your preference. I love this recipe both ways. If you don’t precook the oats, the muffins will be denser, chewier, with a more nutty flavor. If you do pre-cook the oats, the muffins will be lighter, softer, fluffier and more “cake-like”, with less of a strong nutty flavor. Personally, I probably lean towards not pre-cooking them (I love the flavor and texture), but it’s totally up to you!
If you do choose to pre-cook the oats, use only 1/2 cup instead of 3/4 cup and incorporate them into the batter with the wet ingredients rather than the dry.
Hope that helps!
carm
hi there
may i sub veg oil instead of butter?
The Littlest Crumb
Hi Carm, unfortunately oil doesn’t work well as a 1:1 substitution with butter. You could substitute the butter with margarine, but any other substitutions would need more testing.
MARCI
I always substitute oil never margarine and its always fine
The Littlest Crumb
Thanks for the feedback Marci!
Khlood
I loved it i made it for my road trip with my child’s classroom mummies