Low Sugar Banana Walnut Muffins

This cooking/baking thing has been on a roll lately!  To be honest, I think it's my way of procrastinating some other stuff that has to get done (like finishing the lesson plans for my class coming up... 7 days and counting until that is due!).  Oh well, at least we'll eat well up until that deadline AND my class stuff will get done... it always does.

So tonight I had 2 very ripe bananas staring at me on the counter.  They had gotten brown enough that I knew neither one of us would eat them and I have not been to the grocery store for the week yet because I did enough menu planning from last week to last us through Tuesday.  So what that meant was I needed to use the bananas and I thought Ryan would enjoy something different for breakfast in the morning. 

I found a regular banana bread recipe that was "low calorie" and made it WLS friendly.  Remember - I am a little more than 2.5 years out, so I know I can have a few traces of sugar.  If you are brand new post-op, I'd wait a few months before trying this and go with all splenda substitute instead of the half and half you'll see below. Feel free to email/msg me if you have questions!

Ingredients:
1/8 cup splenda for baking
1/8 cup sugar
2 tbsp butter, softened
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce (this is marked "made with splenda" and sold in a 6 pk of individual cups)
1 cup ripe bananas, mashed (3 small or 2 large - make sure they are ripe ripe)
3/4 cup all purpose flour (can use 1/2 cup all purpose and 1/4 cup wheat if you'd like)
1/2 cup almond flour (I use Bob's Red Mill brand - this is GREAT for upping the protein content)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped walnuts AND 1/4 cup chocolate chips (I made 6 with walnuts for me and 5 with Chocolate chips for Ryan)  If doing the full batch with walnuts, you'll want 1/2 cup.
Baking spray or muffin wraps for baking
This makes 11 or 12 muffins total

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray muffin pan with baking spray or line with muffin wraps.
2) In a large mixing bowl, combine softened butter and sugar, and beat with a mixer at low speed until well combined.  Add the egg, vanilla and applesauce, and beat another 30 seconds or until well blended. Fold in the bananas (I used the mixer again on low to get the bananas smooth - Ryan doesn't like the chunky bananas).
3) Combine all types of flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in another bowl. Stir until combined.
4) Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and mix until moistened.
5) Add  batter to individual muffin cups, about 2/3rd's full.
6) Sprinkle tops with walnuts or chocolate chips.  Again, for WLS people - walnuts add another round of protein in and the chocolate chips don't really work for us - unless you can find the sugar free ones, and I never can seem to find them! 
7) Bake at 350 degrees for 17-20 minutes.  Let muffins partially cool before serving.  Ours went nicely with a small glass of skim milk : )