Almond Flour Banana Muffins are easy, low carb, paleo and gluten free banana muffins that are naturally sweetened, fluffy and full of banana flavor. Plus they are made in a blender!
Love baking with bananas? Check out other reader’s favorite healthy banana muffins and oat flour banana muffins.
Table of contents
Gluten Free Banana Muffins
Almond flour banana muffins came around after I purchased a Costco size bag of almond flour, and have been playing around with it for a month making all kinds of healthy snack recipes.
5 lbs gone and our family got 2 new staple almond flour recipes we can’t get enough of, almond flour banana bread and these moist banana muffins with almond flour.
This recipe is a reader favorite! Just read the dozens of positive comments and reviews below.
Swap out your loaf pan for a muffin pan instead, and within 40 minutes, you can enjoy fluffy muffins. Plus, unlike traditional muffins, almond flour banana bread muffins are lower in carbs, sugar-free, oil-free and grain-free. Making them a great option for healthy and easy breakfast, snack or dessert.
What Makes These Muffins Healthy?
- Sugar free: These healthy muffins are free from any refined sugar, honey or maple syrup (minus the chocolate chips). Not even a drop of oil. Isn’t it amazing?!
- Low carb, high protein and full of fiber: Nutrition wise they beat most banana snacks. Eat one and you are full without even minor bloating. My kids love these and yours will too!
- Fluffy banana muffins: Just because these are gluten-free banana muffins, doesn’t mean that I wanted to sacrifice flavor or texture. These little banana breads are light, fluffy, and raised up. Best of all, they have no odd aftertaste or dense “heavy” feel.
- Dietary friendly: There are also several ways you can adapt this almond flour banana muffins recipe too. Just keep reading for all the top tips, tricks, and recipe variations!
Ingredients for Low Carb Banana Muffins
You will need 10 simple ingredients to make these low carb banana muffins.
- Bananas: Use overripe bananas with lots of black spots. Previously frozen bananas are fine. When mashed, it makes about 1 1/2 cups of mashed bananas.
- Eggs: Use large eggs for the best results. You could try the recipe with all egg whites (1 egg = 1/4 cup whites), but I much prefer the former.
- Almond flour: Use blanched almond flour, which yields moist and tender baked goods due to the higher healthy fats content. Some have had success with almond meal, but the texture may be grainy, and it can taste “healthier”. You can quickly make almond flour at home or just buy it at any grocery store.
- Baking powder and baking soda: Act as leavening agents and provide rise for fluffy results.
- Vanilla extract: It is wonderful to add dessert flavor to the muffins without the need for added sugars. Use vanilla seeds, if following paleo.
- Cinnamon and salt
Variations
- Chocolate chips: I use mini dark chocolate chips, which I find distribute better than larger ones or chocolate chunks. You could also use sugar free chocolate chips or cacao nibs (for paleo banana muffins).
- Chopped nuts: Add about a handful of chopped walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc.
- Blueberries: Use fresh or frozen blueberries(don’t thaw before baking). Add around 1/4 cup. We also love these almond flour blueberry muffins with a hint of orange.
- Raisins: Add between 1/4 – 1/2 cup of raisins. You could also add half raisins and half nuts.
- Citrus zest: Use 1/2 – 1 orange or lemon zest depending on how much flavor you want. You may also love these healthy lemon poppy seed muffins.
- Sweetener: This almond flour banana muffin batter has the right amount of sweetness. If you do have more of a sweet tooth, add a little bit of your favorite granulated sweetener. For keto banana muffins, use monk fruit or erythritol.
- For vegan banana muffins: Swap the eggs for chia seed egg or flax egg instead. The recipe won’t be quite as “pretty” or risen, but it should be delicious.
How to Make Almond Flour Banana Muffins
Here is a quick overview hot to make almond flour banana muffins in a blender. It is such an easy recipe where you don’t need to dirty a bowl, use a masher, or mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately.
Prepare the batter: First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Then, in a blender or food processor, add bananas, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and process until smooth.
I love to blend my almond flour muffin batter into an almost smoothie consistency for pillowy, soft banana muffins. The food processor won’t yield as smooth results but it works.
Then, add almond flour and process just enough to combine. Pause, scrape the walls, and process again just a bit, to combine.
Add chocolate chips (or your choice of add-ins, if using) and stir with a spatula.
Divide the mixture evenly: Using an ice cream scoop, distribute the batter between 12 muffin pan openings until they’re 3/4 full each. You can line them with muffins liners or use a silicone muffin tin sprayed lightly with cooking spray.
Bake: Bake almond flour banana muffins in preheated to 350 degrees F oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown on top and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Once baked, remove from the oven, allow them to cool on a cooling rack for about 20 minutes, and then enjoy!
Recipe Tip
Several readers have let me know that the banana muffins are ready at between 17-25 minutes for them, so the first time you bake these, I suggest checking from 17 minutes. The climate and your oven may affect the bake time.
How to Make Ahead and Store
Make Ahead: You can prepare the batter, minus the leavening agents, up to a day in advance. Leave it covered in the refrigerator and mix in the baking powder and soda before baking the muffins.
Storing: Store muffins at room temperature for 2-3 days or within the refrigerator for 5-7 days. As they’re quite moist, I’ve found they store better when loosely covered rather than in an airtight container.
Freezing: Freeze in layers with parchment paper between, in a large freezer bag. They will store in the freezer for up to three months.
Storage Tip
You might find my guides how to store muffins and how to freeze muffins helpful to keep your leftover baked muffins fresh longer.
How Do You Reheat the Muffins?
- From fridge: Microwave the muffins in 15-second increments until warmed through.
- From freezer: Thaw in the fridge first and then reheat as in the step above. Alternatively, add straight to the microwave and heat in 20-second increments until warmed through.
Can I Substitute the Almond Flour?
This recipe was designed explicitly with almond flour in mind. However, there are several ways you can substitute the flour, though each will affect the final result in one way or another.
The closest substitution for almond flour would be cashew flour. For a nut free version, you can use sunflower seed flour.
Others in the comments have also successfully substituted cassava flour, oat flour or used a combination of almond flour and all-purpose gluten free flour.
If using leftover almond pulp (dried) from almond milk, you’ll need to add a little oil in the recipe due to the lower fat content. 1-2 tablespoons of melted butter, avocado oil or melted coconut oil should work.
Any time you experiment with a different flour in gluten free baking, it may require a little tweaking. If your muffins seem a little dry, use more banana, a little oil, or liquid sweetener. A bit too moist? Increase the flour, etc.
You can’t use regular flour though. Muffins will not turn out with any wheat flour because it has gluten in it. Check out my healthy banana muffin recipe, if you would like to use traditional flour.
Tips for Best Results
- Measure the flour using the “spoon and level method”: Use a spoon to add flour to your measuring cup and then use the back of a knife to level off the cup. Avoid scooping flour directly into your measuring cup, or you’ll add too much.
- You can make almond flour at home: It is basically ground almonds. Just use blanched almonds (or do that yourself by boiling them for 1 minute, rinsing under cold water, and removing the skins), allow them to dry, and then blend for 10-20 seconds into a floury powder.
- If you’re counting calories: Several readers have pointed out to me that their almond flour varies massively to mine in terms of calories (up to 100 cal less per muffin!). For this reason, I suggest plugging this recipe into a nutrition app with your specific ingredients for accurate numbers.
- If your bananas are not ripe: Here is a quick tutorial how to ripen bananas fast.
FAQs
No. This recipe will not turn out well as a quick bread but I do have a delicious gluten free almond flour banana bread recipe or try this protein banana bread.
Yes. Just use mini muffin pan and reduce the baking time. I recommend to check on muffins at 10 minutes and every few minutes afterward.
No. These muffins will not turn out.
More Banana Muffins Recipes
- Healthy banana chocolate chip muffins
- Pumpkin banana muffins
- Healthy blueberry banana muffins
- Healthy zucchini banana muffins
- Healthy banana oatmeal muffins
- Protein banana muffins
- Vegan banana muffins
More Almond Flour Recipes to Try
- Almond flour zucchini muffins
- Almond flour pancakes
- Almond flour brownies
- Almond flour yogurt muffins
Almond Flour Banana Muffins
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 large ripe bananas with brown spots
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3 cups almond flour
- 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips
- Cooking spray I use Misto
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and spray silicone muffin tin with cooking spray. Set aside.
- In a powerful blender or food processor, add bananas, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, baking soda + powder, salt and process until smooth.
- Add almond flour and process just enough to combine. Pause, scrape the walls and process just a bit again to combine. Add chocolate chips and stir with a spatula.
- Using an ice cream scoop, divide batter between 12 openings of previously prepared muffin tin and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown and toothpick inserted come out clean.
- Remove from the oven, let cool 20 minutes and enjoy.
Video
Notes
- Store: Store muffins at room temperature for 2-3 days or in refrigerator for 5-7 days. As they’re quite moist, I’ve found they store better when loosely covered rather than in an airtight container.
- Freeze: Freeze in layers with parchment paper between, in a large freezer bag. They will store in the freezer for up to three months.
- Over ripen bananas are a must! If your batter is too thick, means bananas were not ripe enough. Muffins won’t come out good. Also can’t use other fruit.
- Eggs: You could try the recipe with all egg whites (1 egg = ¼ cup whites) but I much prefer the former.
- Almond flour: Some have had success with almond meal, but the texture may be grainy, and it can taste “healthier”.
- Sweetener: This almond flour banana muffin batter is naturally sugar free. If you do have more of a sweet tooth, add a little of your favorite granulated sweetener. For keto/paleo banana muffins, use monk fruit or erythritol, etc.
- Baking time: Several readers have let me know that the banana muffins are ready at between 17-25 minutes for them, so the first time you bake these, I suggest checking from 17 minutes. The climate and your oven may affect the bake time.
- For vegan banana muffins: Swap the eggs for chia seed egg or flax egg instead.
These are SO delicious! I was a bit uncertain how they’d turn out without oil or butter but they are so moist and somehow buttery tasting! Magic!
I wish you’d mentioned your ‘recipe tip’ about the timing in the instructions. I set an alarm for 30mins and at about 25mins I could smell a little burning. Pretty disappointing!
I will add it to the notes of the recipe card. However, this has not been my experience or majority of readers, therefore it’s one of tips. There could be many tips. Therefore, we spend hours updating recipe posts with helpful tips. We try to keep recipe cards shorter for easier printing.
Absolutely delicious! The entire family liked them they dissappeared fast. Inlike that there is no sugar as my husband is diabetic. Would like suggestions on swap out for chocolate chips for him even though the recipe only has 1/4 cup.
Would like to know if recipe cam be doubled up?
That’s amazing when entire family loves what we moms make! I usually double this recipe. You can use cacao nibs instead of chocolate chips. You can double the recipe in 2 muffin pans and if your blender jug is large enough to hold all ingredients. I don’t think I could do it in my Blendtec. But you could do 2 batches in a row, just not in one shot.
Hi (: I want to try this recipe except I’d like to ask about the sweetness if you can give advice because my family likes sweet and I have to use real sugar brown or white with my nut flour recipes. They won’t let me use sugar free! Can sugar be added and how much will work right in this recipe? Would you recommend brown or white sugar? THANK YOU 😊
You have to use liquid sweetener with this recipe otherwise it won’t work. Sometimes it could but I haven’t tested this recipe with sugar. Maple syrup isn’t sugar free sweetener. Or honey.
The best!…i add more chocolate chips and use the convection setting on my oven at 325F and they turn out perfectly!
These are a hit. I love the texture and taste. No extra sweeteners needed. Love the 1 blender prep also. I may try with cashew or cassava flour next time too. Definitely a keeper. Thank you
Sounds great thank you! Could I add crushed pineapple to your recipe without a problem?
I’m not sure. Maybe just a little bit and only if you squeeze it very well.
I made this recipe and they came out so well and tasty
These were amazing! I added a little banana extract, 1/4 cup of stevia brown sugar, 1/4 cup of granulated stevia, & then I sprinkled some of the stevia brown sugar on top & oh my goodness! Just amazing, thank you so much for the recipe, I’m diabetic & always looking for ways to satisfy my sweet tooth
These are delicious! Easy to make and they taste wonderful. I actually mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, as I do not have a blender myself. Could I ask a question though–What would you suggest, and this is concerning both the cook time and oven temperature when making the muffins in a Jumbo muffin pan–the type that holds 6 muffins. Any information you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Jerry.