Food for Thought: SunButter & Banana Muffins with Cream Cheese & Grape Jelly Glaze (GF, NF)

One of the things Little Miss and I enjoy doing most on the weekends is having our time in the kitchen together to bake and try new recipes. She LOVES being my lil' Sous Chef! :)

This one is already a big hit with her, and I enjoyed one this morning with a cup of coffee. It tasted like I was eating a sinfully delicious pastry or donut, but instead it's packed with protein and Vitamin E from the SunButter along with the yumminess of bananas which are heart-healthy and a great source of potassium. They're also gluten and nut free, of course!

I adapted this recipe from simplygluten-free for our SunButter & Banana muffins. Here's what how I made them:

Muffin Ingredients & Directions:

1½ cups gluten-free all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon kosher or fine sea salt

3 large eggs

5 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons of unsweetened applesauce

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup of  SunButter Creamy spread

2 medium (ripe) mashed bananas

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 12 standard muffin cups with paper liners or spray well with non-stick cooking spray.
2. In a large mixing bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar, applesauce, vanilla, and Sunbutter until well combined and smooth. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and whisk together. Stir in the mashed bananas.
3. Divide the mixture between the prepared muffin cups and bake for 25 – 30 minutes.
4. Let cool completely.

Our batch yielded 14 muffins.

Cream Cheese & Grape Jelly Glaze Ingredients & Directions:

While our muffins were in the oven we prepared this mixture, that way we could return the glaze to the refrigerator after mixing to let it "thicken" and have an easier consistency to work with.

1/2 cup of Whipped Cream Cheese spread
1/2 cup of Grape Jelly, Jam, or Preserves
(you could use any flavor jam/jelly you prefer - strawberry, blackberry, etc.)

1. In a medium size bowl begin whip the cream cheese and grape jam together until smooth. Next time I will probably blend it in the blender rather than whipping by hand in order to get it completely smooth, but Little Miss was rather fond of the pops of jelly and color it gave them.
2. Cover and store in refrigerator until baked muffins are completely cool and you're ready to glaze.
3. After muffins have cooled, I spooned glaze into a ziploc bag and snipped the corner off so we could spread over the muffins. Little Miss had fun helping do this part, lol, so some aren't perfect but who cares!
4. Store glazed muffins in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  

Little Miss is in LOVE with these. She said they tasted like she was eating a sandwich but in a cupcake. We had a picnic at her school last night, so I packed one up for her to eat. She devoured it. :)

Nothing I love more than coming up with yummy new ways to make her 'treats'!