Get ready to sink your teeth into soft, fluffy, and moist banana nut muffins. You’ll love the crackly-crunchy brown sugar topping that makes these muffins extra delicious! Check out the hundreds of 5-start reviews – this recipe is a winner!
We took our all-time favorite easy banana bread and turned it into the best banana nut muffins. We love this recipe so much that we even used it for our blueberry banana muffins and banana chocolate chip muffins!
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These muffins are
Fluffy and moist: These muffins get the perfect soft texture from a combination of melted butter and lots of mashed bananas.
Quick and easy: The muffin batter comes together in minutes. No special equipment needed.
Flavorful: The perfect combination of bananas, sweet brown sugar, and fragrant vanilla.
Packed with bananas: Two whole cups of mashed bananas!
Always met with rave reviews: This recipe is a reader favorite and family favorite.
Key ingredients
The following ingredients are essential to making these muffins the best:
Bananas: Use 3-4 overripe bananas to make this bread sweet, moist, and undeniably banana-flavored.
Brown sugar: The only sugar used in these muffins is brown sugar. It is in the batter and it gets sprinkled on top before baking. The brown sugar gives the bread a deeper flavor and almost caramel-like sweetness. Plus, brown sugar and bananas are a fantastic flavor combo.
Topping: Each muffin is topped with a sprinkling of brown sugar and chopped walnuts. This adds a delicate sweet and crunchy layer right on top of each muffin.
Recipe overview
*Full recipe below in recipe card*
Whisk melted butter and brown sugar.
Add eggs, vanilla, and mashed banana.
Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt.
Stir in the chopped nuts.
Scoop the batter into a muffin pan and sprinkle the top of each muffin with brown sugar and chopped nuts.
Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and the top is golden brown.
Tips: Baking with bananas
It’s important that you use overripe bananas. The skin of the bananas should have brown speckles or even be turning dark brownish-black. This ensures that the bananas mash smoothly and are extra sweet.
You will need 3-4 large bananas for this recipe.
Mash the bananas using a fork or potato masher.
I mash the bananas on a paper plate then fold the plate to slide the mashed banana into the measuring cup.
Recipe tips
- The more ripe your bananas are, the sweeter they’ll be.
- Your brown sugar should be fresh and soft. Since this is a key ingredient (used in both the topping and the batter), make sure it is fresh and moist.
- Use your favorite nuts. Walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, or macadamia nuts are all delicious. Feel free to use a combination of nuts.
- Top these muffins with salted butter, honey butter or maple butter to make them extra tasty.
How to make this recipe healthier
Prefer your muffins a bit more wholesome? I have successfully made the following changes:
- Reduce the brown sugar to ½ cup (in the batter). I still recommend sprinkling brown sugar on top.
- Swap the melted butter for melted coconut oil or mild olive oil.
- Reduce the melted butter/oil to 6 tablespoons.
- Swap ¾ cup of the all purpose flour for white whole wheat flour.
Serving and storage
These muffins are best the day they are made; however, leftovers can be stored tightly-covered at room temperature for up to 2 days, or refrigerated for several days longer.
These are best served warm. I reheat them in the microwave or toaster oven and serve with a smear of salted butter.
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Recipe
Banana Nut Muffins
Ingredients
Muffins:
- ½ cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- ⅔ cup light brown sugar, lightly packed, make sure it is fresh and soft
- 2 large eggs
- 2 cups mashed very ripe bananas , about 3-4 bananas
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, optional
- ½ cup chopped walnuts, or swap for macadamia nuts, pecans, or hazelnuts
Topping:
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- 2-3 tablespoons chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- In a large bowl, whisk melted butter and ⅔ cup brown sugar until well combined, about 1 full minute. Add eggs, mashed banana, and vanilla, whisking until combined.
- In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and use a rubber spatula to lightly stir the batter until almost combined. Add ½ cup chopped nuts and stir until no streaks of flour remain. Be careful not to over-mix.
- Grease 15 standard-sized muffin cups and divide the batter evenly among the cups. Sprinkle the top of the each cup with brown sugar and chopped walnuts (topping). Bake for 14-17 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Place the pan on a wire rack to cool.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional Information is an estimate based on third-party calculations and may vary based on products used and serving sizes.
Tried this recipe?Leave a comment and rating below!
Meagan
Absolutely perfect muffins! Finally felt like I was making the real deal!
The ample toppings really satisfied me. I felt no regrets not having muffin papers as so moist!
I only put nuts on half for those who don’t love them as much as I.
Made a delicious optional cream cheese frosting for perfection: simply beat cream cheese, butter, sugar, vanilla.
Thanks for sharing this receipt!!
Celebrating Sweets
I’m so happy that you enjoyed them. Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂 Happy baking! -Allison
Misty Seale
These were the best banana nut muffins that I have ever eaten!!
Celebrating Sweets
I’m so glad! Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂
Terri Armitage
Super good!! Topped with the brown sugar and granola, and left the walnuts on the inside.
Terri Armitage
Oh, and I used brown butter ??
Celebrating Sweets
I’m glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂
Sheli T.
Best Banana Nut Muffins I’ve ever made or eaten! Absolutely delicious! Saving and sharing this recipe.
Celebrating Sweets
I’m glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Veronica
These are fabulous! However, I used 12 greased muffin tins and filled them almost to the top edge to get bigger muffins.
To get bigger tops on our muffins another website suggests baking the muffins at 425 for 6-8 min. then immediately reduce heat to 350 for about another 12 min.. Watch carefully and check with toothpick.
Also I discovered, after experimenting with several batches, you get bigger muffins using a darkened old muffin pan than you do if you use paper baking cups or foil baking cups, even using the same amount of batter.
I have a Hamilton Beach counter top convection oven. I tried the muffins on bake (convection fan is off) and on convection (convection fan is on). I think they came out better with the convection fan on.
I shared and everyone else loved them too.
Second time around I didn’t have enough bananas in the freezer so I topped off with carrot pulp (from juicing) that I also had in the freezer. So about 1 1/2cups banana + 1/2 cup carrot pulp.
I also added 1/4 tsp of nutmeg with 1 tsp of cinnamon. I was out of butter (we are in the middle of COV19) so I used 1/2 cup of vegetable oil.
I did not put walnuts in the batter but did the walnut/brown sugar topping but added another tsp of cinnamon to the topping mix .They came out great! Moist, cinnamon-y and not too sweet.
I think it’s the brown sugar in the recipe that makes them so good. I grew up making banana bread with shortening and white sugar. This is SO MUCH better!
Thank you so much for this recipe. My son wants my banana bread recipe but I’m going to give him yours instead.
Celebrating Sweets
I’m glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for sharing your experience. Happy baking! 🙂 -Allison
Lizette
This is the best banana nut muffin i’ve ever had! Thank you for sharing your recipe. Five stars!!
Celebrating Sweets
I’m glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂
Wanda
These are the most deliciously moist muffins that i have ever made. The house smells magnificent when they are baking. So much so that my boys were eagerly waiting for them to come out of The oven. 🙂
Celebrating Sweets
I’m glad you enjoyed them! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Caroline
This the recipe was so easy to follow and most ingredients were already in my pantry. The final product was delicious and I will be making these muffins again and again!
Celebrating Sweets
I’m so happy that you enjoyed them! Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂
Christina Hernandez
Just made this amazing recipe. I love that its not overly sweet like other muffins, just the right amount of sweetness. We also used pecans cuz of an allergy to walnuts. This is hands down the best recipe ever.
Celebrating Sweets
I’m so happy that you enjoyed them! Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂
Emily
Made these today with my kids (5 and 3) as part of our school “science experiment” ? and the fact that I had a bunch of bananas that were starting to show their “spots”, and these are by far the BEST banana nut muffins I have ever made. Super moist and not exceedingly sweet, just perfect. I hope some will actually last until breakfast tomorrow morning!
Celebrating Sweets
I’m so happy that you enjoyed them! Thanks for taking the time to comment. 🙂