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1
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit . Grease or spray your muffin pan if you are not using paper muffin cups.
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2
Put all the dry ingredients (the first 5 ingredients listed above are all the dry ingredients) into a large mixing bowl and mix with a spoon (doesn't matter what kind of spoon) until well combined.
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3
Add the chopped gala apple to the large mixing bowl containing all the dry ingredits and give it a quick stir and a couple folds. Don't spend too much time mixing it because it will be mixed again later on in the recipe. Set this bowl aside. It will not be needed again until step 7 of the recipe.
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4
In a medium mixing bowl, add the almond milk and crunchy peanut butter. Whisk with a fork until the peanut butter is blended with the milk. It doesn't take very long to do. As a note, the substitutions for the peanut butter and almond milk are in the recipe description. If you are using any kind of dried fruit including raisins, then put them in with the wet ingredients now. That way they will start soaking up some liquid and plumping a bit.
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5
Mix in the Greek yogurt (I use 0% fat to keep the recipe low calorie, but high protein) and the 2 eggs to the medium mixing bowl containing the milky, peanut butter deliciousness. Mix to combine well.
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6
Add the well-mashed banana to the bowl with the rest of the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Sometimes I break the bananas into chunks and pop them into the Magic Bullet for 2 seconds instead of mashing them because I'm lazy like that. Overripe bananas provide the sweetness to these muffins. Using frozen bananas (defrosted before being mashed) adds a ton of moisture to this recipe. Frozen, overripe bananas are great to have on hand. You can use overripe (not frozen) bananas and this recipe will still work out. It's pretty forgiving that way. Even if you bananas are yellow they will work, but you'll have to try this recipe in the future when you have your frozen overripe bananas ready and you'll see what I mean. It takes it to a whole new level!
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7
In a circular motion, pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients. Instead of just dumping the wet ingredients in I like to pour it around because apparently too much mixing of muffin batter will make them hard (dense) and starting off with a somewhat even coat of wet on top of dry will allow for less mixing and, therefore, lighter muffins. But, hey, if you want to knock yourself out and dump it all in then go for it! Don't let me cramp your style, but if you do that, then please don't say my muffin recipe leads to dense muffins :).
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8
Mix with a spoon until the wet and dry ingredients are blended. Try not to stir them too much, but just enough until the ingredients are mixed. Let it stand for roughly 2 to 3 minutes. I like doing this because it gives a little bit of time for the oat bran to moisten up a tiny bit more. I usually set the bowl aside while I get the muffin cups ready. I have a hard time separating those little buggers so by the time the cups are ready it's been about 2 minutes. After the batter sits for just a few minutes, it's now time to start filling the pan which will be described in the step below.
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9
These muffins don't rise very much. Maybe about a 1/4 inch to a maximum of 1/2 inch. Fill your muffin cups accordingly. I usually get anywhere from 14 to 16 medium muffins. You can get 12 large ones. I'm not fancy so I use a soup spoon and heap it up with batter to fill each cup. I've heard of people using ice cream scoops and go for it if you have one on hand. I don't like doing dishes too much so the soup spoon I used to mix the ingredients words great for me!
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10
Place the muffin pan on the middle rack and bake at 375 for 20 to 25 minutes or until the tops starts to brown just a tad and a toothpick comes out clean. Make sure to keep an eye on these babies because every oven is different. I put on a timer, but if it hasn't gone off yet and I start smelling them from the next room I'll go take a quick peak.
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11
Once they are done, remove from the oven. Put the individual muffins onto a cooling rack so that the bottoms do not continue cooking and get hard. The muffin top will have a nice crunch and the inside will be nice and moist with bursts of sweetness coming from the apple pieces. The oat bran will have the consistency of cooked steel oats; a chewy texture. Yum! Now, keep in mind that the integrity of these muffins are to be healthy, so don't be expecting the sweetness and gooey, cakey insides like what you would get out of a chocolate chip muffin or banana bread muffin. If you don't care about the health factor then go ahead and add some chocolate chips and sugars. I won't be offended! I've only used paper muffin cups for this recipe and I found that when I ate them before they cooled that they stuck just a tiny bit to the paper (not too much, though). Later in the evening once they completely cooled they stopped sticking. Just a tip -- .
