Banana Muffins with Just a Little Maple

Most banana muffin recipes call for anywhere from ½ cup to a full cup of sugar on top of already-sweet ripe bananas — sugar the bananas didn’t actually need help from. This one uses just 2 tablespoons of real maple syrup across the whole batch of 12, and leans on very ripe, well-spotted bananas to do the rest. It’s not a “sugar-free” muffin pretending otherwise; it’s a muffin with a small, specific, honestly-counted amount of added sugar in it.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners, or grease it well.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the mashed banana, eggs, melted coconut oil, maple syrup, and vanilla extract.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
4. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients just until no dry streaks remain — a few lumps are fine, and overmixing is the most common reason banana muffins come out dense. Fold in the walnuts, if using.
5. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 cups.
6. Bake 18–22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
7. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

Where the added sugar number comes from

The only added sugar in this recipe is the 2 tablespoons of maple syrup. Real maple syrup carries about 13 grams of sugar per tablespoon (per USDA reference data), so 2 tablespoons comes to roughly 26 grams of added sugar across the whole batch. Divided across 12 muffins, that’s about 2.2 grams of added sugar per muffin — rounded here to 2g.

The bananas themselves add real sweetness, but it’s the fruit’s own natural sugar, not added sugar — the same distinction the SugarSage app draws for every food logged in it. If you’d rather have a completely added-sugar-free version, the maple syrup can be left out entirely; the muffins will be a little less sweet and a touch denser, but they’ll still bake and hold together fine.