Banana Protein Muffins with Nuts: Low Carb Gluten Free Recipe

Looking for a healthy snack with no added sugar? Low carb protein muffins with banana are filled with the healthy ingredients you need to feel satisfied.

Satisfying breakfast choices keeps snacking to a minimum. This is a great reason to make easy muffins as a keto treat on Saturday mornings, or really anytime you need a high protein snack.

Whether you’re in search of an easy breakfast you can take to go, or you need a way to fit more healthy fats in without too many extra carbs, you can add banana nut protein muffins to your healthy muffin recipes list.

Banana Nut Protein Muffin Ingredients

The ingredient list is similar to my banana bread recipe, with a few tweaks. For this high protein muffins recipe, the main ingredients include almond flour, collagen, green bananas, eggs, and butter. The recipe add-ins are cinnamon, baking powder, and chopped walnuts.

Keto-Friendly Sweeteners

If you’re accustomed to a little more sweetness in your muffin recipes, you can also add a sweetener of your choice. While I don’t typically add sweeteners to low carb recipes, I made an exception for this one to help balance out the hint of collagen flavor. I used a few drops of vanilla liquid stevia for these healthy protein muffins.

If you find stevia drops too bitter, grab this free sweetener conversion guide. It will help you figure out the best low carb sweeteners, as well as how to convert them into keto dessert recipes.

If you want to keep your low carb diet sweetener free, you can leave sweeteners out completely. The bananas in this recipe still provide plenty of banana flavor, which may make these muffins sweet enough.

Use Green Bananas

Speaking of bananas, my keto banana muffin recipe is different than other banana muffin recipes.

Instead of using overripe bananas with a lot of brown spots, I do the opposite and use bananas that are very green. While these aren’t quite as easy to mash, using green bananas will help you take advantage of the resistant starch in bananas.

I actually peel and freeze green bananas as soon after purchase, otherwise I’d forget about them before they ripen. Plus I’ve read freezing bananas can help keep the resistant starch in tact, or even add more of this helpful ingredient.

Another benefit is once you thaw a green banana, it’s easy to get mashed bananas for this low carb protein banana muffin recipe.

Protein Powder

As with most of my low carb recipes with protein, I use Great Lakes Collagen Protein. I prefer this brand since I know it’s made from high quality, grass-fed animals. You can choose another brand as long as it’s a grass-fed version and doesn’t contain other junk ingredients.

I order collagen protein from Thrive Market since I save $5 per can over Amazon. While there’s a membership fee to join Thrive Market, I make that up in collagen alone since I use so much of it. The big savings I get from other keto friendly foods is a wonderful perk.

While I tested this recipe with egg white protein, collagen definitely works better. Even though the egg protein makes these muffins fluffy, it also dries them out. This made the banana nut muffins bland and difficult to eat.

I also don’t love adding other protein powders to low carb recipes, like whey protein. One reason is I have dairy sensitivities, so I avoid dairy when I can. This includes whey protein since it’s made from the liquid part of milk that separates during cheese production.

Even if you don’t have a dairy sensitivity, whey protein has also been reported to lead to other side effects when used in high dosages. 

If you still want banana nut muffins without added protein, leave the collagen protein out of the mix and add another 1/2 cup of almond flour instead.

Eggs and Butter

The final ingredients I wanted to comment on are the eggs and butter. Do your best to use high quality grass-fed butter whenever possible since it contains more nutrients. Same thing goes for eggs.

The best eggs you can choose are pasture raised eggs. Not only are these types of eggs from chickens that are more humanely raised, but they also contain two times as much Omega 3 fat, three times the amount of vitamin D, four times more vitamin E, and seven times more beta carotene than traditionally raised eggs.

Oh, and that’s not the only thing I wanted to mention about eggs. Whenever you use eggs for baking, it’s best to use eggs that are at room temperature. This helps the ingredients mix more evenly.

How to Make Banana Nut Protein Muffins

Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees F. While the oven heats up, you can take care of the meal prep for these delicious banana muffins.

First, melt the butter in a small saucepan and set aside. Then, chop the nuts and prep the muffin pans. You can chop the nuts by hand, or use this great grab from Amazon that makes chopping nuts for keto recipes simple.

If you use a regular muffin tin, then line muffin tin with cupcake liners for easy clean up. Another option is to test out muffin top pans. (Another score from Amazon).

While you can fit less batter in the muffin top pans, the muffins bake more evenly and require less cooking time. I especially love these muffin top pans when it comes to low carb breakfast muffins since they don’t deflate like traditional egg muffins do.

Instead of using muffin liners, I use coconut oil cooking spray to keep the muffins from sticking to the muffin top pans. Either way, set the chopped nuts and prepared muffin tins aside.

The next step is to mix up the ingredients for the low carb banana muffin batter.

Mix the Muffin Ingredients

Start by adding the wet ingredients, which includes the eggs, bananas, and melted butter, into a mixing bowl. If you decide to use a liquid sweetener, like Stevia drops, add that into the wet ingredients. Use a hand mixer to beat the ingredients together. Once the wet ingredients are well combined, set aside.

Next, add all of the dry ingredients, except the walnuts, into a separate large bowl. The dry ingredients include almond flour, collagen protein, cinnamon, and baking powder. If you decide to use a dry sweetener, like a pure Stevia powder, then add that in now. Use the hand mixer to combine all of the dry ingredients together.

After both the wet and dry ingredients are mixed up, pour the dry ingredients on top of the wet ingredients mixture. Use a hand mixture to combine everything together until no dry spots remain.

Finally add the crushed walnuts into the muffin batter. Reserve a small amount of the chopped walnuts to sprinkle on top of the banana nut protein muffins. Stir to combine the chopped walnuts into the muffin batter.

Scoop Batter and Bake

The final step is to scoop the muffin batter into the prepared muffin pan. For best results, fill the muffin tins about 3/4 of the way full since as you bake muffins, they will rise.

Once you fill the muffin cups, sprinkle the remaining walnuts on top of the muffins and add the muffin trays into the preheated oven. Bake until the muffin centers are fully cooked and the tops turn golden brown.

For traditional muffins, check these around the 15 – 20 minute mark, although they will likely take at least 20 – 25 minutes to fully bake. If you use the muffin top trays, total baking time should only take around 12-15 minutes.

Once the muffins are golden on the outside, but still have a moist texture on the inside, remove from the oven and allow them to cool before serving. This easy to grab low carb breakfast option stores best in an airtight container in the fridge.

The Banana Nut Protein Muffin Wrap Up

Healthy recipes with simple ingredients is the best way to stick to a keto diet long term. Easy breakfast recipes you can prep ahead of time ensures you’re prepared for success on a low carb diet.

While this recipe is delicious as is, next time you can zhush it up by adding dark chocolate chips for delicious chocolate banana protein muffins, or even switch the fruit up to blueberries for blueberry protein muffins. This is easy to do by using the original recipe, and then add additional mix-ins for protein muffins that are low carb with even more great flavors.

Looking for even more portable breakfasts that are a little higher in grams of protein? Check out these chocolate walnut breakfast cookies. And even though most people don’t consider cupcakes a proper breakfast, I sometimes curb my chocolate cupcake cravings with dark chocolate protein cupcakes.

Don’t forget to save this easy grab and go breakfast to your keto breakfast board on Pinterest. If you love the recipe, please share with your friends on social media.

Keep scrolling for the nutritional information and recipe card.

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Protein Muffins Banana

More High Protein Breakfast Recipes from Eating Fat is the New Skinny:

Loaded Bacon Egg Protein Bowl

Low Carb Pizza Egg Cups

Ham & Egg Cups

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