This cranberry banana muffins recipe is quick & easy. It creates a delicious muffin that combines sweet ripe bananas with slightly tart cranberries. It is also far cheaper to make your own delectable muffins than buy expensive days old muffins from a store.
You can also turn these cranberry banana muffins into an entertaining (if slightly messy) family project where your children help you to make the banana bread batter and pour/scoop the batter into the muffin trays. Your kids will love making & EATING these tasty muffins!
Delicious Cranberry Banana Muffins
FYI – This is the “muffin version” of our great tasting Cranberry Banana Bread. It is simple & easy to make. This recipe should take you only 10-15 minutes or so to prepare and clean up. Please be aware that this is an oven-baked recipe. It is not made with a bread machine. You will also find a printable and “pin-able” recipe at the bottom of this page.
Ingredients – Cranberry Banana Muffins Recipe
- 8 Tablespoons – Unsalted Butter (softened) – 8 tablespoons equals 1/2 Cup – 115 grams
- 2 – Large Eggs
- 3 – Bananas (ripe & large sized) – 345 grams – Roughly 1 1/2 cups of mashed bananas
- 2 Cups – Flour (all purpose flour) – 240 grams
- 1 Cup – Granulated White Sugar – 200 grams
- 1 Teaspoon – Vanilla Extract – 5 milliliters
- 1 Teaspoon – Baking Soda – 5 milliliters
- 1 Teaspoon – Baking Powder (aluminum free) – 5 milliliters
- 1/2 Teaspoon – Salt – 2.5 milliliters
- 1 1/2 Cups – Cranberries (fresh or frozen) – 150 grams – Not dried cranberries
Servings – Roughly 18-24 standard muffins (non-jumbo muffins)
Equipment – Measuring cup & spoons, mixing bowl, long wooden spoon, muffin trays, paper muffin liners (baking cups), oven mitts, cooling racks… and of course, an oven.
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Pour/Scoop Batter into Muffin Cups & Bake
Instructions – Cranberry Banana Muffins Recipe
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Mash bananas with a fork.
- Soften butter in a microwave.
- Lightly beat eggs.
- Stir eggs, bananas and butter together.
- Mix in remaining ingredients (except the cranberries). Stir until batter is completely mixed.
- Add the cranberries to the batter. Stir in the cranberries until fully mixed into batter.
- Place paper muffin baking cups (liners) inside the muffin trays. Or grease the muffin trays if you are not using muffin baking cups or non-stick muffin trays.
- Add the batter to the muffin baking cups until each one is about 50-75% full with batter.
- Place muffin trays into the oven.
- Bake muffins for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove the muffin trays from the oven. Use oven mitts when removing the muffin trays.
- Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes within the muffin trays.
- Remove the muffins and place them on a cooling rack in order to completely cool.
- Read the tips section below for additional information on how to make these muffins successfully.
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Tips – Cranberry Banana Bread Muffins Recipe
- The tips below are designed to help muffin “novices” and/or people with limited baking experience.
- If you want to print out this recipe, please scroll down the page to our recipe widget “box”. You will find a “print recipe” button located right under the product image photo in this box. Click on that button in order to print out the basic recipe instructions.
- You can use fresh or frozen cranberries to make these cranberry muffins. Depending on the season, fresh cranberries can be hard to find. Therefore, I often like to use frozen cranberries because they are usually more available in the supermarket. They also can sit in your freezer for a long time until you are ready to make some new cranberry muffins or cranberry banana bread.
- This recipe does NOT use dried cranberries.
- If you have any cranberry muffin cups with too much batter and too few berries, you can push a few extra berries into the batter within the cups.
- FYI – Cranberry banana muffins are great as Thanksgiving deserts or Thanksgiving snacks!
- Creating cranberry banana bread muffins is a great way to convert “boring” banana bread into a fun & tasty project for kids. For example, you can let them “help” you by pouring/scooping the batter into the muffin trays.
- Optional – If you want to eliminate the butter used in this recipe (i.e. to reduce the saturated fat in your diet), you can replace the 8 tablespoons of butter with 1/2 cup of yogurt. 8 tablespoons = 1/2 cup. Our thanks to Kim for this great suggestion. For more details on butter substitutes, you might like to read the Bob’s Red Mill article “What Is a Good Substitute for Butter?“.
- Use RIPE bananas for improved taste. Ripe bananas are soft and the exterior peel is usually yellow with small black & brown spots. Hard yellow/green(ish) bananas are too starchy and have less banana flavor
- Make sure to use 3 large bananas (not 3 medium bananas). Otherwise, the muffins might turn out to be a little dry.
- In case, you like to use cups versus banana “sizes”… 3 large-sized bananas equal roughly 1 1/3 to 1 2/3 cups of mashed bananas (not sliced bananas). Of course, banana sizes can vary greatly… so stick to measured cups of mashed bananas for the best results.
- There are a variety of ways to pour the batter into the muffin tray. For example, you can scoop with a spoon (while using another spoon to scrape off the batter into the muffin tray), use a small cup and spoon, use an ice cream scoop with a trigger release, use a homemade “pastry bag” to squeeze the batter into the muffin liners, etc.
- Use paper baking cups (liners) if you want to easily extract the cranberry muffins from the muffin tray. Paper baking cups also result in less mess on your fingers when removing the muffins.
- For larger muffins, you can buy trays designed for “jumbo” muffins (versus trays for standard sized muffins). This recipe should generate roughly 8-12 jumbo banana bread muffins. However, the baking time will be a little longer versus regular muffin trays.
- If your family loves cranberry-based desserts & snacks, you should also try our recipes for Applesauce Cranberry Bread, Cranberry Bread (with Dried Cranberries), Cranberry Bread (with Fresh Cranberries) and Pumpkin Cranberry Bread.
- Or does your family prefer banana-based baked goods? Then try our Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies or one of our many Banana Bread Recipes.
- If you have a problem with a recipe, please make sure that you are following the recipe exactly (i.e. using the correct oven temperature), using the correct amounts of ingredients (i.e. don’t eyeball the measurements versus using a measuring cup or accidentally add a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for), using the correct ingredients (i.e. baking soda/powder versus yeast or all purpose flour versus bread flour), etc. Please don’t “wing” things with recipes.
- In addition, you should always try to use relatively fresh baking soda & powder for the best results. For example, using baking soda from an open container (that has been deodorizing your refrigerator for months) may lead to subpar results. Old & hard baking soda/powder may lead to rising problems and/or leave small bitter clumps in your cranberry banana bread muffins.
- My recipes are based on US ingredient measurements (i.e. US cups & tablespoons). However, as a courtesy to our European visitors, I have also included some very ROUGH European equivalents (i.e. grams & milliliters). Since I rarely use European measurements when baking, please let me know in the comment section below if any of the European ingredient measurements need to be changed (i.e. for XYZ ingredient, milliliters are more commonly used versus the grams information listed in the recipe).
- For more easy banana bread muffin recipes, please visit Bread Dad’s main section on Muffin Recipes.
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. Beginning bakers learn a lot from your comments, tips & recipe variations.
Reference Sources
- Wikipedia, Banana Bread, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_bread
- Wikipedia, Cranberry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry
- Wikipedia, Muffin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffin
Cranberry Banana Muffins – Quick & Easy Recipe
This cranberry banana muffins recipe is quick & easy. It creates a delicious muffin that combines sweet ripe bananas with slightly tart cranberries. It is also far cheaper to make your own delectable muffins than buy expensive days old muffins from a store. Visit BreadDad.com for more great muffin and banana bread recipes.
Servings: 24 Muffins
Calories: 125kcal
Ingredients
- 8 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter (softened)
- 2 Eggs (large)
- 3 Bananas (ripe & large sized)
- 2 Cups Flour (all purpose flour)
- 1 Cup Granulated White Sugar
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder (aluminum free)
- 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
- 1 1/2 Cups Cranberries (fresh or frozen) – Not dried cranberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Mash bananas with a fork.
- Soften butter in a microwave.
- Lightly beat eggs.
- Stir eggs, bananas and butter together.
- Mix in remaining ingredients (except the cranberries). Stir until batter is completely mixed.
- Add the cranberries to the batter. Stir in the cranberries until fully mixed into batter.
- Place paper muffin baking cups (liners) inside the muffin trays. Or grease the muffin trays if you are not using muffin baking cups or non-stick muffin trays.
- Add the batter to the muffin baking cups until each one is about 50-75% full with batter.
- Place muffin trays into the oven.
- Bake muffins for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove the muffin trays from the oven. Use oven mitts when removing the muffin trays.
- Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes within the muffin trays.
- Remove the muffins and place them on a cooling rack in order to completely cool.
Notes
This is a Bread Dad recipe and may not be copied or reproduced. This recipe is copyright protected under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Legal Disclaimer
The nutritional information is provided using recipe tools such as WP Recipe Maker. These figures should only be considered as an estimate. They should not be construed as a guarantee of accuracy given visitors may use different serving sizes, ingredients, etc. See our legal disclaimer for additional nutrition disclosures.
Nutrition
Serving: 1Muffin | Calories: 125kcal | Carbohydrates: 21g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Cholesterol: 24mg | Sodium: 118mg | Potassium: 76mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 10g | Vitamin A: 150IU | Vitamin C: 2mg | Calcium: 16mg | Iron: 1mg
If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. Beginning bakers learn a lot from your comments, tips & recipe variations. Moreover, it is ALWAYS great to hear from someone who has enjoyed our recipes!!!
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- Blueberry Banana Muffins
- Cranberry Banana Bread
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- Pumpkin Banana Muffins
- Pumpkin Cranberry Bread
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