HEALTHY Banana Pineapple Muffins

I have been dying to share this recipe! Because I have an overactive sweet tooth (to say the least), I've been on a quest to create a repertoire of healthy or at least healthier desserts that I can enjoy and feel comfortable sharing with Grace Louise. (My ultimate goal is to incorporate crazy things like spinach and black beans into decadent brownies, but hold on sister, not so fast. Baby steps).

My first recipe was an Almond Honey Cookie which is super easy and yummy. Next was an absolutely amazingly delicious dark chocolate cupcake with a dark chocolate ganache. Hello?!?! (Recipe for that later). In between precious cups of moist chocolate goodness and this mouth-watering muffin, was a brownie recipe, as well as a chocolate muffin, neither of which were worth sharing.

So, on to the star of the show. Banana Pineapple Muffins. I get to post my own recipe, because I tweaked the original recipe so much that it resembles my own creation more than whatever unhealthy mess it was before...

Ingredients
2 mashed bananas
8 oz can of pineapple "tidbits" drained
3/4 cup sucanat (dehydrated cane juice. low glycemic. good stuff. check it out.)
1/3 cup of unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Streusel Topping
2 tbl flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tbl cold butter
1 tbl brown sugar

Combine the flour, cinnamon, and brown sugar in a small bowl. Cut in the butter until it turns to coarse pebbles.

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Mash bananas and pineapple in a bowl and set aside. Combine wet ingredients, including sucanat and the mashed banana/pineapple mixture. Separately combine dry ingredients. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix with handheld mixer until batter comes together. Stir in chopped nuts. Pour batter into muffin tins filling completely (in order to get that cute muffin top). Sprinkle streusel on top and bake for 25 minutes.

Okay. I'm clearly no food photographer- or recipe writer for that matter. The only reason I'm sharing this is because these muffins are that darn good! My picture is telling on me, so I might as well come clean. My streusel was a total bomb. Apparently I'm not a good butter cutter. I ended up with more of a paste than pebbles and felt like I was soil testing (ribbon method for all you aggie's out there) rather than streuseling. That only means one thing. These muffins have the potential to be even better than I experienced. Holy Cow.

Grace Louise LOVES to help in the kitchen. Or bang measuring cups together, whatever! (If this picture looks poorly staged, it is! No one is ever around to take pictures of us together!!!)