I am not a meal or snack prepper. I see things online about creating beautiful Bento boxes for school lunches or gourmet homemade snacks to be ready on the table when the kids get home from school. While I would love for that to be the reality someday, it does not work for my current phase of life with a two-year-old. Instead, we are big on ready-made or no-prep-needed options like many of these simple snack combos for kids. The one snack/breakfast item that I do occasionally prep ahead, though, is these banana peach muffins. Once baked and cooled, I cut them in half and freeze them – they are easy to heat up for part of a quick meal or snack and my toddler loves them!

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends avoiding serving added sugar to children under age two, so something that I appreciate about this recipe is that it does not contain any added sugar or any artificial sweeteners. Added sugar means sugar that is not already naturally occurring in the food. For example, the bananas and peaches in this recipe contain sugar, but that sugar is already present in the fruit vs. me adding it in. As my son just turned two, we are now including some items that have added sugar in them (we’ve had so much fun introducing him to ice cream!), but because these muffins have been a staple in our house for a while, I plan to keep making them as long as he enjoys them. I hope you and your family will enjoy them as well!

Ingredients:

2 ripe bananas, mashed
¼ cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla
¾ cup milk
1 egg, beaten
2 cups flour (if you have extra baby cereal hanging around, you can also do 1 cup flour, 1 cup baby cereal to add a bit of extra iron)
2 Tbsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 cup diced peaches (if peaches aren’t in season, I rinse and drain two mini containers of diced peaches canned in juice – similar to these ones)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin with butter or cooking spray, or line with paper muffin liners.
In a medium bowl, combine mashed bananas, canola oil, vanilla, milk, and egg.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mixing until moist.
Fold in diced peaches.
Spoon into muffin tin.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until slightly golden on top and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack for about 15 minutes.

Recipe adapted from mommysfabulousfinds.com