It turns out you can make a pretty decent little baked snack with just three ingredients: bananas, eggs and oats. That’s it. No flour, butter, added sugar, not even baking powder unless you decide you want it.
Sometimes the simplest recipes are the ones that surprise me most. I wanted to make a quick, healthy snack that felt like a treat, without reaching for dairy, wheat, a heap of sugar… and to be honest, the guilt! I wanted something easy made from ingredients I generally have in the kitchen anyway.
The result isn’t going to be a light, fluffy café muffin. Without flour, butter, sugar or raising agents, these are naturally going to be denser and softer… somewhere between a banana muffin and a baked banana pancake.
But Does it Need Sugar?
Rather than simply adding sugar because that’s what we normally do when we bake, I decided to split the basic mixture in half. I left one half exactly as it was.
To the other half I added: 1 tsp brown sugar, ½ tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1 Tbsp shredded coconut, just for fun.
Then I baked both batches together and compared them.
The Result?
Obviously, the brown sugar version was sweeter (even though it was a slight amount of sweetness), and the cinnamon and vanilla added another layer of flavour, but the coconut gave it great texture and taste. But it’s also worth remembering that your palate adjusts. I love porridge without sugar for example (I love the taste of oats). If you’re accustomed to traditional muffins, the three-ingredient version may initially taste quite plain. But if you’re looking for a simple breakfast bite, lunchbox addition or something to have with a cup of coffee, you may decide added sugar simply isn’t necessary.
Start With Three, Then Make Them Your Own
The beauty of this recipe is that the three ingredients are really just a starting point. Once you’ve made the basic version, there are plenty of ways to change the flavour or texture.
- Greek yoghurt: Add around ¼–½ cup for a softer, moister result. You may need a little extra ground oat if the mixture becomes too wet.
- Cinnamon: Add ½–1 teaspoon for flavour without adding sweetness
- Vanilla Extract: A teaspoon works beautifully with banana.
- Baking powder: Add 1 teaspoon if you’d prefer a slightly lighter, more muffin-like texture. It’s not essential.
- Nuts and seeds: Chopped walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or chia seeds can add texture.
- Fruit: Try blueberries, finely chopped apple or a few raisins.
- Coconut: A couple of tablespoons of desiccated coconut work nicely with banana.
- Peanut butter: A spoonful adds richness and makes them more substantial.
- Dark Chocolate: A few dark chocolate chips turn them into more of a treat while still keeping the basic recipe relatively simple.
- Spices: You could also play around with ginger, nutmeg or mixed spice.
This is the kind of recipe I love because there’s really very little to get wrong. Two bananas, two eggs and a cup of ground oats give you the foundation. Bake it exactly like that, or use it as a blank canvas for whatever happens to be in the pantry.
The Basic 3-Ingredient Recipe
The riper the bananas, the better. As bananas ripen, their natural sweetness becomes much more pronounced, so those slightly sad-looking, spotty bananas sitting in the fruit bowl are perfect for this. If you have frozen bananas, they work just as well too (after all, they are squished into a puree so it doesn’t matter either way).
For the oats, I simply grind wholegrain oats until they resemble a coarse flour using my blender. There’s no need to buy oat flour especially for the recipe.
Ingredients
- 2 very ripe bananas
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup ground oats (approx. 3 cups of wholegrain oats)
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Mash bananas thoroughly in a bowl.
- Add eggs and whisk together until reasonably well combined.
- Stir through the ground oats.
- Leave the mixture to sit for around 5–10 minutes. This gives the oats a chance to absorb some of the moisture and thicken the mixture slightly.
- Spoon into a greased or lined baking tin.
- Bake for approximately 18–22 minutes, or until the centre is set and the top is beginning to colour.
- Allow to cool slightly before removing from the tin.
Rather than automatically adding butter, flour and sugar because that’s how we’ve always baked, sometimes it’s worth stripping a recipe right back and seeing what those ingredients were actually doing. In this case, three very ordinary ingredients may be all you need.
