Vegan Banana Nut & Date Muffins

*Casie Here*

I had some ripe bananas to use up, so I decided to make some banana muffins. I looked up some recipes and tweaked it to make it my own.

Here is what I did:

Chop up 10 Dates (I get ours from Costco)

 Prepare 2 chia 'eggs' (take 2 TBS. Chia Powder + 1/2 cup water ~ mix, let sit for at least 5 minutes)

We have gotten our Chia Powder Whole Foods, Trader Joes or Hy-Vee and we have also gotten it from our favorite online supplier for a lot of our food (www.vitacost.com) make sure it's the POWDER. I have use the seed before and it works fine, I just prefer the more ground up texture of the Powder.

 After a little while it gets thick and goopy like and EGG! 

 I mixed my chopped dates with the chia goop to help separate the sticky bits of dates and get them more evenly distributed (otherwise they stick together in one big clump). 

 Mash 6 Bananas

 Add 2 containers of applesauce or 1 cup total)

 Mix all the wet ingredients together.

Add 1 cup Almond Milk. This is absolutely my favorite milk EVER. There are a lot of new variations of this out there, but I love this one the most and I don't care that it has 20 more calories than the reduced sugar one.

 I didn't take any picts of the dry ingredients bowl except for when I mixed the two together. Here are the dry ingredients. Pretty standard.

2 1/2 cups whole wheat and regular organic flour mixed (use whatever flour you have on hand. I just like to buy both and mix it together)

1 1/2 cup oats (just regular Quaker Oats, not the quick cook ones) You can get a HUGE box at Costco

1/4 cup flax seed

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt (I use pink Himalian salt from Costco)

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts (also from Costco)

 The flax seed we use from Costco.

 Ready to be put in the muffin pans.

I use this scoop to get them even. I didn't fill it quite full, just 3/4 full for each muffin. This batch makes 36 muffins.

 And done.
Nice and warm!

 Honestly you can not even taste the dates in this muffin. They are mostly to make the muffin moist. I LOVE dates in all my muffins. It adds sweetness so you can cut down on the sugar  you use. Another one of my very favorite muffins are my Orange Date Muffins HERE.

 These were so, so good. My kids snatched a bunch up as soon as they were cool enough to touch.

In a bowl mix together

2 1/2 cups whole wheat and regular organic flour mixed 

1 1/2 cup oats

1/4 cup flax seed

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt (I use pink Himalian salt)

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup walnuts

In a separate bowl mix together

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 chia 'eggs' (2 TBS. Chia Powder + 1/2 cup water ~ mix, let sit)

6 ripe bananas (mashed)

2 containers Organic Applesauce (1 cup total)

3 TBS. Vegan Butter (we use Earth Balance) this could be optional

1 cup Almond Milk

Stir the two together. 

Scoop into muffin tins 

Bake 350 for 25 mins