Healthy Papaya Banana Muffins | Whole Wheat Flour

Healthy Papaya Banana Muffins | Whole Wheat Flour

The Healthy Whole Wheat Papaya Banana Muffins are going to be your next favorite bake. The sweet flavors are beautifully balanced with mashed bananas and diced papayas, which are mixed with healthy ingredients like whole wheat flour and jaggery powder. These Banana Papaya Muffins are definitely a must try if you love to bake!

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Presenting here is one of my favorite bakes ever, the healthy Papaya Banana Muffins! These muffins are soft, perfectly moist and the flavor imparted by the mashed bananas and diced papaya pieces is really fresh and fruity.

I have kept the muffins simple, without the use of any nuts, seeds or chocolate chips. So, to some people these may sound overly simplistic. But, trust me, the fruity flavors win hands down here.

How are these Papaya Banana Muffins healthy?

The banana and papaya muffins are made with a healthy flour and sweetener combination of whole wheat flour and jaggery powder, respectively. So, these are the perfect refined flour free muffins, and refined sugar free muffins as well.

Whole wheat flour is more nutritious compared to white flour, since it is fibre rich and contains more nutrients than its white counterpart. Whole wheat flour is also rich in vitamins, iron, calcium and other nutrients. Similar is the case with jaggery powder. It has it’s own share of benefits over refined sugar. Jaggery comes from either sugar cane or sap of palm, and since there are no harmful chemicals involved while making, it retains its nutrients at the time of processing. So, again it is a better substitute to the white sugar.

Whole wheat flour and jaggery powder have been the base of many recipes on this blog here. If you like this recipe, then you would definitely love these Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies or these extremely soft Banana Bread Cookies. Also, if you have tried using Ragi (Finger Millet Flour) in your cooking recipes, you will definitely love to incorporate it in your bakes as well, with these healthy Ragi Chocolate Muffins.

Papaya Banana Muffins – How did this particular recipe come to my mind?

To tell you the truth, Papaya would have been the last choice for me to try any bake. But, like I had mentioned in an earlier post, we have some frozen bananas (we ordered a lot of them from Costco by mistake), so you will find a lot of recipes using mashed bananas. And, we had papaya leftovers too, since we couldn’t finish the diced papaya pieces in one fruit serving. Well, this was a very pleasant surprise that I loved Papaya better in muffins!

This recipe was adapted from an earlier experiment of mine where I had tried making Peach Muffins, sadly, which I did not document on the blog, and that has been pending ever since. So, I adapted the same one to make these Papaya Muffins.

How do you make the healthy Whole Wheat Papaya Banana Muffins?

Here is the step-by-step process to make these healthy Papaya Banana Muffins:

• Mash the bananas in a bowl. Now add in the lemon juice, egg, olive oil, milk, jaggery powder and vanilla extract to the mashed banana and whisk all the ingredients till they are completely blended. In a separate bowl, add whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Mix everything together using a hand whisk and make a well in the center.
• Add the wet ingredients mixture inside the well created out from dry ingredients, and slowly mix all the ingredients together to form a uniform blend (I use a simple hand whisk for mixing). Don’t over mix, just blend till you see a smooth mixture. Once the dry and wet ingredients form a homogeneous mixture, gently fold in the diced papaya.
• Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Scoop out 2-3 tablespoons of mixture and pour into the greased muffin cups (To grease the muffin pan, rub the muffin cups with little oil and then lightly dust each individual cup with a little whole wheat flour). I was able to make 12 muffins in total.
• Once the oven is pre-heated, bake the muffins in the oven for around 25 minutes or till the muffins are done using the toothpick test, that is, when the inserted toothpick in the muffin comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the oven, and allow them to cool for 5-10 minutes. The Papaya Banana Muffins are ready!

Substitutions & Tips For Papaya Banana Muffins

• Whole Wheat Flour – Feel free to replace whole wheat flour with the same quantity of all-purpose flour.
• Jaggery Powder – If Jaggery Powder is not available, you can replace it with equal amount of refined sugar.
• Diced Papaya – I have used Diced Papaya pieces in this recipe. You can also replace it with mashed papaya, if you don’t like the little papaya chunks popping in your mouth in every bite.
• Don’t over mix the batter. Over-mixing results in formation of air pockets on top and inside of the baked goods, muffins in this case. I would advise to gently fold in the batter, till you see a uniform mixture being formed. I had tried hard not to over-mix, but still you may see some tiny holes on top of the baked muffins in the picture. So, try harder I would say.
• I would recommend not to use an electric mixer for this recipe, just a hand whisk or a simple spatula should be sufficient for mixing the batter.

Also, continuing the tradition, here comes the 50th recipe under My Julie & Julia Project. For those who don’t know, I had started this project last year, under which I had planned to post 100 recipes from my kitchen by the end of the year 2019. But since I got busy with other priorities in life, I have planned to continue the tradition in 2020. So, this is the Recipe #50 for you all. Half down, half more to go!

Let’s get going to the Healthy Banana Papaya Muffins Recipe now. Happy baking everyone!!

Method (Step-by-step with pictures)

• Mash the bananas in a bowl. Now add in the lemon juice, egg, olive oil, milk, jaggery powder and vanilla extract to the mashed banana and whisk all the ingredients till they are completely blended.

• In a separate bowl, add whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Mix everything together using a hand whisk and make a well in the center.

• Add the wet ingredients mixture inside the well created out from dry ingredients, and slowly mix all the ingredients together to form a uniform blend (I use a simple hand whisk for mixing). Don’t over mix, just blend till you see a smooth mixture.
• Once the dry and wet ingredients form a homogeneous mixture, gently fold in the diced papaya.

• Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Scoop out 2-3 tablespoons of mixture and pour into the greased muffin cups (To grease the muffin pan, rub the muffin cups with little oil and then lightly dust each individual cup with a little whole wheat flour). I was able to make 12 muffins in total.
• Once the oven is pre-heated, bake the muffins in the oven for around 25 minutes or till the muffins are done using the toothpick test, that is, when the inserted toothpick in the muffin comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the oven, and allow them to cool for 5-10 minutes.

The Healthy Whole Wheat Papaya Banana Muffins are ready to be served warm, or these can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a week!