Chase is on a spoon strike. He has always seemed to prefer the baby led weaning approach to eating and food exploration and now that he’s locking his mouth shut whenever we try to airplane-zoom purees into his mouth, we’ve all but abandoned spoon feeding in favor of real food. Feeding Chase has always been a little stressful for me since he’d still much rather play than eat, but he’s getting better and better at eating foods like baked chicken, avocado, sweet potatoes and more.
A couple of weekends ago, I let him eat some of the baked steel cut oatmeal I was enjoying for breakfast and he seemed to really like it! I had some maple syrup in my steel cut oatmeal which is fine but I’m trying to avoid giving Chase food with added sugar outside of fruit right now and wanted to try my hand at making him a batch of muffins sweetened only with bananas inspired by my favorite banana bread protein pancakes.
Last weekend, I made a batch of blender muffins for Chase which turned out great and he seemed to love them! The texture was softer and gummier than typical muffins, so Chase could easily hold onto one and mouth all over it with his six little teeth without it crumbling too easily. It was still soft enough for him to easily chew and swallow and I think the sweetness from the bananas kept him coming back for more!
Making the muffins in our high-powered blender worked well, eliminating any large chunks from the muffins and simultaneously making cleanup a breeze. Just blend the ingredients, pour batter into a muffin pan, wash out the blender and dry!
Banana Oatmeal Blender Muffins for Baby
Makes 9 muffins
Ingredients
- 2 very ripe bananas
- 3/4 cup old fashioned oatmeal
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup breastmilk or formula
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Blend all ingredients in a high powdered blender
- Spray a silicone muffin pan with cooking spray or coat lightly with coconut oil
- Pour muffin batter into muffin pan
- Place silicone muffin pan onto a baking sheet and bake for 10 – 12 minutes
- Allow to cool completely before serving to baby
- Store extra muffins in an air-tight container in the refrigerator or freeze for future use
As you may have noticed in the recipe instructions, I recommend using a silicone muffin pan for these muffins, as a silicone pan will make it easy to pop the muffins out, store and feed to little ones without worrying about wrappers.
If you decide to give this recipe a try for the little ones in your life, I hope they love the muffins as much as Chase did!
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Note: Though this is a kid-friendly recipe, please listen to your doctor’s advice regarding feeding little ones and introducing new foods and flavors to babies. Whole milk or coconut milk may also be used in place of the breastmilk or formula with your pediatrician’s okay!
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I don’t have kids but I would totally make these for myself to make mornings easy throughout the week!
Oh I definitely ate a few myself! The texture is different than typical “adult” muffins, but the flavor was delicious!
Have you tried letting Chase hold the spoon to feed himself? Our eight month old will not let us spoon feed her, but happily takes a spoonful of food to feed herself. It’s very messy though! Our dog loves it! Lol!
yes! he’ll do that (he actually loves it when the spoon is dipped in peanut butter). it’s definitely a mess!! i don’t feel like he eats much that way, but we do let him play with the spoon a lot! 🙂
My kids are now teenagers so I don’t fully remember–but isn’t there something about not giving pre 1 year olds non-human milk and eggs, even in mixed stuff? I just simply can’t recall but I’d be concerned about that. Other than that, these look fabs.
I think there are different schools of thought on that. I didn’t give my daughter eggs until she was getting close to a year old, but some people give little ones eggs a lot earlier than that if they’re doing the baby-led weaning approach. Not before 6 months though of course.
Eggs are usually fine, but cows milk is not recommended until after 12 months. You could actually make these muffins with expressed breast milk!
Yogurt is acceptable for infants after 6 months of age and that’s whole cows milk. You don’t want to give them a bottle of it to drink or anything but stuff like yogurt or something baked with milk is fine.
It really depends! My pediatrician said nothing is off limits for Chase at this point other than honey! The muffins could definitely be made with breastmilk or coconut milk, too!
Nothing but breast milk or formula until 12 months. I’m a speech therapist who specializes in feeding. This, of course, is just my opinion. Feeding specialists and pediatricians all have their own recommendations and preferences. But in all honesty, a little milk ins’t going to do any harm, especially to an 11 month old! It’s more about the nutritional quality of the milk rather than there being anything harmful with cows milk or coconut milk.
Thanks for chiming in, Lisa! I’ll update the post to say breastmilk rather than whole milk in the recipe and add a note at the bottom as well. Our pediatrician gave the greenlight on recipes made with whole milk, but to be on the safe/more conventional side, I’ll edit the recipe to say breastmilk.
I’m pinning this recipe for future use! Even though Ellie is approaching 2 this October (cue mom tears) and eats everything we eat, she’d probably still like them and plus we do want another baby at some point! Thanks for sharing! I wish I’d thought to do something like this a year ago.
love! i make something similar for william, but i blend spinach in it too!
The blender has become my most used appliance since having a baby – I whip everything up for him and have now moved on to smoothies. You can’t beat the convenience and clean up!
My little 10 month old still doesn’t have any teeth ? Do you think he could gum these pretty easily??? Thanks for sharing the recipe!!
Lovely idea! Will definitely send these on to my friend! Her little boy has just gone 1!
I remember making these for my son. I would also change up the flavors and add in spinach, blueberries even cinnamon etc… Funny story We were at a friends cottage and I had brought some for my son to snack on. I had offered one to our friends daughter who is the same age as my son. She was enjoying the muffin and offered a bite to her dad, he thought they were delicious, until I told that that they were made with my Breastmilk =0) The expression on his face was priceless to say the least. (Side note, I had mentioned to my girlfriend before offering the muffin that it had some of my breast milk in it and she was totally fine with it). It was the laugh of the weekend.
Glad to hear that Chase is enjoying BLW.
Haha that’s hilarious! I can only imagine what he must have been like in that moment!
When you give Chase chicken, etc. is it seasoned with any oils or spices? Or do you make him his own plain chicken to eat?
Both! If I’m making chicken just for Chase, I don’t use any seasoning but we will also give him pieces of chicken that we eat when we all eat together and he LOVES it. I can tell he prefers seasoned chicken to plain chicken, but I do a mix of both.
I’m 31 weeks pregnant and already dreaming of making food for our little munchkin! I cannot wait to be able to make/introduce these to our little one. Thanks for the post Julie!! (By the way, I think you and I have due dates close to one another in date but 1 year apart! I love reading your bump posts again, now that I’m experiencing all the same type of stuff!)
So excited for you, Bethany!!! <3 Congratulations! You're getting SO close!
Thank you Julie!! Counting down the weeks! 🙂
How fun! What a great idea. I have a chronic medical condition that makes me really tired so I try not to cook too much but I’m going to make it a goal to make these. Looks so easy. My almost 9 month old would love them.
More baby recipes!!! Please haha!!!
You look phenomenal lately, I would love to see a WIAW type post from you so I can be doing more of what you’re doing :). Have a great week!
These look awesome and easy! I have been looking for food prep ideas for my eight month old and I am definitely making these next week.
What a great idea! I bet it’d be good with almond milk and peanut butter on top but thats more with myself in mind and not a baby…haha!
I made your protein banana pancakes for my 12 mos twins and they LOVE them. I cooked them with coconut oil as well which gave a nice crispy exterior. A trick I have found with spoon feeding is to let them hold a spoon but to feed them with my own spoon (so we have 3 spoons). This keeps there hands busy and stops them from grabbing the spoon and flinging food around. I will definitely try this recipe as well!!
So glad they like the protein pancakes!!! 🙂 Thank you for reporting back! <3
I made these yesterday for my 9 month old and he devoured them! Thanks so much for the recipe!
So glad to hear it!! Thank you for reporting back and letting me know. 🙂
These banana muffins sound wonderful! And I never would’ve thought of using breastmilk….I know this is a mommy-friendly recipe of course, but I might just stick with almond milk! 🙂
these muffins are such a great idea! What brands do you like for pre-made baby food?
I’m not sure of the exact science of this, but vigorously shaking breastmilk (or putting it in a blender) will denature the proteins in the milk — not that the baby couldn’t eat/drink it at this point, but between blending it and baking it, it will definitely have lost most of its beneficial properties! Another alternative would be unsweetened oat milk, although that can be harder to find.
Finally got around to making these today and my tiny 1-year-old daughter devoured two of them. They were a hit! Thanks for sharing the recipe!
Followed directions exactly and after 12 minutes baking, they are still uncooked. What am I doing wrong here? Are they supposed to be thick pudding consistency when cooked? I’m using formula, for reference. Thanks!
Even did an extra 5 minutes and still don’t seem done at all
Could it be because I’m using baby oatmeal?
I think that would probably make a big difference! I’m sorry the recipe is giving you trouble! Baby oatmeal definitely has a different consistency so I think that may be the issue.
I left these muffins sitting out overnight ? your recipe says to keep them in the refrigerator though. Do they have to stay in the fridge?
No! The will just last longer if you keep them in the fridge! 🙂
Can frozen breastmilk be used in this recipe?
Thanks!
I make these again and again and my babies/toddlers have all loved them! They’re so easy and I throw a few handfuls of spinach into the blender to sneak in veggies
Love the spinach addition! So glad your little ones like them so much!