The Best Banana Muffin Recipe
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My well-loved Banana Muffin recipe makes incredibly soft, moist muffins with tall, bakery-style tops, sweet banana flavor, and an optional streusel topping. Recipe includes a how-to video!
Your New Favorite Breakfast Muffin
Today I’m re-sharing one of my favorite muffin recipes on the blog, and apparently, it’s one of your favorites too! With nearly 500 five-star ratings, this banana muffin recipe is so well-loved–and for good reason. These aren’t bland, boring, or basic banana muffins; they’re fluffy, moist, and loaded with banana flavor! And if that’s not enough, I recommend topping them with a crumbly, buttery streusel topping…yum.
It took a lot of tries and tweaks to get this recipe just perfect, but it was well worth the trial and error. This recipe makes the softest, most flavorful banana muffin I’ve ever tasted–with or without the streusel on top–and I’m so proud to share it with you!
What Makes My Banana Muffin Recipe the BEST:
- It produces big, beautiful muffin tops, thanks to a nifty oven trick.
- They truly taste like banana muffins, not banana bread in muffin form.
- No mixer needed–these come together easily by hand!
- They take just 30 minutes from start to finish.
What You Need
I found I needed several key ingredients for super flavorful banana muffins:
- Three ripe bananas. Ripe bananas mash easier and impart a stronger banana flavor, so save this recipe for those dark brown bananas lingering at the bottom of your fruit basket (unlike the ones pictured above!).
- Butter and oil. We’re using a blend of both for the best flavored and textured banana muffin (same reason I use a blend of the two in my vanilla cake!). Stick with a neutral oil like canola, vegetable, or grapeseed, and make sure your butter is unsalted.
- Sugar. Using some brown sugar gives the muffins a rich flavor that granulated alone wouldn’t provide.
- Buttermilk. This keeps the muffins nice and moist. If you’re low on buttermilk, give my easy buttermilk substitute a try!
SAM’S TIP: Overmixing your batter can lead to muffins that are too tough and dense. To avoid this, I strongly recommend stirring your banana muffin batter completely by hand. Luckily, we’re using melted butter in this recipe, so mixing by hand is a breeze!
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Banana Muffins
- Mash your bananas, then add the oil and melted butter.
- Stir in the sugar, then add the eggs, vanilla, and buttermilk.
- Combine your dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then gently fold them into the wet ingredients.
- Portion the batter into a paper-lined muffin tin, filling each liner is ¾ of the way full.
- Prepare your streusel, if using, and portion over each muffin.
- Bake your muffins for 8 minutes, then reduce the temperature and bake for another 7-8 minutes until done.
SAM’S TIP: While I personally love and recommend the streusel topping, I know not everyone wants the extra sugar or dishes. As you can see, the “naked” banana muffin pictured below baked up beautifully with an even tidier, higher muffin top. So feel free to skip it!
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, although I do have a separate banana nut muffin recipe you might want to try (it uses browned butter too 🤤). You can add between 1-1½ cups of add-ins (chocolate chips work well!) to this banana muffin recipe. I recommend adding them when you’re almost done incorporating the dry ingredients.
Yes! To do this, you’ll follow the same instructions I provide for my bakery-style chocolate chip muffins:
Bake at 425F for 8 minutes, then reduce the oven to 350F (don’t open the door!) and continue baking until the muffins begin to turn golden brown. This can take anywhere from 7-15 minutes, so keep an eye on them!
This banana muffin recipe freezes very well! In fact, I did this in preparation for Luke’s arrival so I always had a quick breakfast handy during his newborn phase.
If you want want to freeze yours, allow them to cool completely, wrap individually in plastic wrap, place in a Ziploc bag, and freeze. To thaw, either set your muffins out at room temperature or microwave them (just use the defrost setting or they’ll become hard).
So, do you agree? Is this the BEST banana muffin recipe? Let me know in the comments!
Enjoy!
Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
The Best Banana Muffin Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups (385 g) well-mashed ripe bananas, This is typically 3 large bananas for me
- ¼ cup (60 ml) avocado oil or vegetable oil or canola oil, (may substitute vegetable or avocado oil)
- ¼ cup (60 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled at least 5 minutes
- ½ cup (100 g) sugar
- ½ cup (100 g) light brown sugar , tightly packed
- 2 large eggs, room temperature preferred
- ¼ cup (60 ml) buttermilk, room temperature preferred
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
Streusel (optional)
- ½ cup (65 g) all-purpose flour
- ½ cup (100 g) brown sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup (60 g) unsalted butter, cold
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425F (220C) and line a muffin tin with paper liners*
- Place peeled bananas in a large bowl and use a fork or a potato masher to mash them – bananas should be well-mashed.1 ½ cups (385 g) well-mashed ripe bananas
- Add oil and melted butter and stir well.¼ cup (60 ml) avocado oil or vegetable oil or canola oil, ¼ cup (60 g) unsalted butter
- Stir in sugars until well-combined.½ cup (100 g) sugar, ½ cup (100 g) light brown sugar
- Add eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla extract and stir well. Set aside.2 large eggs, 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract, ¼ cup (60 ml) buttermilk
- In a separate bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients — flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour, 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon salt
- Add dry ingredients to your wet batter and gently fold in until ingredients are just combined (don't over-mix the batter!).
- Portion batter into prepared muffin tin, filling each liner ¾ of the way full. Set aside and prepare your Streusel topping.
Streusel Topping (optional)
- Combine flour, brown sugar, and salt in a medium-sized bowl and use a fork to stir the ingredients together.½ cup (65 g) all-purpose flour, ½ cup (100 g) brown sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt
- Using a pastry cutter, cut in your cold butter until the butter is well-worked in and your mixture resembles coarse crumbs.¼ cup (60 g) unsalted butter, cold
- Sprinkle streusel topping evenly over each muffin.
- Bake muffins on 425F (218C) for 8 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 350 (175C) (do not open the oven door or remove the muffins, just leave them in and reduce the temperature) and bake another 7-8 minutes on 350F (177C). A toothpick inserted in the center of the largest muffin should come out clean or with few moist crumbs (no wet batter) to test for doneness.
- Allow muffins to cool before enjoying.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like this? Leave a comment below!
This recipe was originally published 01/05/2018. Updated with more information and better photos 10/17/2019.
Can I use a jumbo muffin pan for this recipe? If so what would you recommend for how many more minutes in the oven?
Hi Erin! Sure, just follow the instructions for our chocolate chip muffins instead 😊
So yummy easy and quick to make yay me !
We’re so happy you like the muffins, Chloe! Thanks so much for your review 😊
I like banana bread, but it does tend to be rather dense, so the lightness of these muffins is appealing. I wonder if you could give an estimate in grams of the weight of the mashed bananas. They vary so greatly in size, a weight would be helpful. Thanks.
Hi Debbie! It’s about 385 grams, I just updated the recipe to reflect this. I hope that helps, and I hope you love the muffins! 🙂
They made huge muffin tops! And about 12 hours after making them, they had become extremely moist and tasted very similar to Otis Spunkmeyer banana nut muffins. Delicious!
These muffins are beyond yummy.
Hi!! Am I able to use this muffin recipe as a base and do another flavour? We make these all the time but want to do a raspberry and white chocolate!
Thanks!!
Hi Jeanenne! You can use our basic muffin recipe and go from there. Hope that helps! 😊
These are yummy thank you so much for sharing this recipe.
We’re so happy you enjoyed them, Diane! ❤
great job, not overly sugared.
We’re so glad you liked them, Gus! Thanks for giving our recipe a try 😊
These turned out great! I added chocolate chips and cinnamon. Light and fluffy. I didn’t see that it makes 15 muffins so I overfilled my 12 pan slightly. Baked a couple minutes longer to make up for it. The topping makes these a 10/10.
Can I not use butter can use oil only
Hi Elijah! You can do an even swap of butter with oil, but the muffins won’t have as great of a flavor. Hope that helps! 🙂
I truly loved this recipe. I used munown buttermilk substitute- cream of tarter and half/half
This recipe is easy, which I like. The muffins turned out delicious. Very moist and flavorful. My streusel didn’t spread. I just had a clump on top. It didn’t keep us from devouring them.Any thoughts why?
Hi Gwen! It’s not really supposed to spread. You sprinkle it over the top of the muffin and it bakes up nicely in place. I’m glad you enjoyed them! 🙂
Moist and delicious!!
Even with regular milk bc I didn’t have buttermilk
We’re happy they turned out so well for you, Katherine! Next time you run out of buttermilk, give our easy buttermilk substitute a try 😊
I have a banana recipe that I love but I thought I would try this recipe. I was pleasantly impressed with your recipe and will be making your recipe from now on. I did not make the strudel topping but I did put maple sugar on top.
Delicious the only thing I changed is I added cinnamon to the crumb mixture.
Sounds great, Joan! We’re so happy you enjoyed the muffins 😊
Bookmarked this because it turned out well! I wanted to change up a bit and was looking through your site if you’ve made banana chocolate muffin but you only have double chocolate muffin recipe. I’m wondering if I should just add cocoa powder in this recipe or not a good idea?
Hi Claire! I’m so glad you enjoyed the muffins. I wouldn’t just add cocoa powder without any other alterations, but I haven’t tried it myself to say for sure what those alterations would be.
Very delicious truly fluffy muffins. I cut down the sugar a bit.
These are The Perfect Muffins.
Thank younfor this recipe.
We’re so glad you like them, Evita! Thanks for trying our recipe ❤
These are absolutely the best. I don’t use any other recipe other than this one. I just add cinnamon as a personal preference but these always turn out soft, moist, and delicious. Thank you!
I tried this recipe and loved it. Muffins were moist and delicious.
We’re so happy you liked the muffins, Sandy! Thanks for your review ❤