Banana rhubarb muffins are perfection. Soft, moist, a crunchy top, a little sweet, a little tart. You couldn’t ask for more!

Two things in my home that I’m always trying to use up are overripe bananas, and in the spring, the abundance of rhubarb in my garden! I developed an easy recipe for the most delicious banana bread muffins, so I thought that maybe I could add in tart rhubarb to offset the sweetness of the banana. I was right. It was delicious. The sweet banana and the tart rhubarb pair perfectly!

Banana rhubarb muffins are super fast and use 1 bowl!

One of the best things about these rhubarb banana muffins is that you don’t need to use an electric mixer or a ton of fancy gadgets. You don’t need a separate bowl – one bowl is all you need to create the most delicious, super fast tasty muffin. For some reason, when I don’t have to find beaters for my hand mixer, or drag out my Kitchenaid, I feel so free. Plus it all seems to go so much faster!

Once you get good at whipping these up, you can have them made and out of the oven in 30 minutes flat! When I was developing the recipe, I realized I had a friend coming over and I didn’t have anything to serve her. Within 30 minutes, she was walking in my door and I was pulling these out of the oven. It was amazing. Such a quick bread!

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How do I make banana rhubarb muffins?

Harvest your rhubarb – or buy it!

When is rhubarb season?

I live in Northeast Ohio, so our rhubarb season is in full swing once the end of April hits, and goes through early summer – about June. It’s a sweet season to make all the old fashioned favorites. While you can get rhubarb at other times of the year, I always believe that eating in season tastes best!

If you don’t grow rhubarb, it’s so easy to find at the store or farmer’s market. Many people have friends who are bursting at the seams with fresh rhubarb. As soon as it is picked, the rhubarb plant regrows to pick it all over again a week later! It’s sort of like the zucchini of spring, so people who grow it often have an abundance of rhubarb!

I split my 3 rhubarb plants last year and ended up with a bumper crop from the 3 old plants + the 3 new plants.

How to harvest rhubarb

When harvesting rhubarb, grab the stalk near the ground and gently pull. I was shocked when I realized I didn’t need to cut my rhubarb stalks with a knife! It literally just pulls right out of the ground. It’s amazing. It also seems to help the plant to do it that way. When I used to harvest with a knife, the part I left in the ground ended up rotting. This way, the plant knows the stalk is gone and goes to work producing more.

Once you pull the stalk, cut off the leaves (they are poisonous for humans and animals too) and cut the bottom off. Wash the tart rhubarb and chop it. I used 3 kind of skinny stalks for this recipe and it was perfect amount of chopped rhubarb.

Brown and cool the butter

Browned butter is a secret ingredient in so many baked goods. Basically, you are toasting the milk solids that are in the butter. That gives it a nutty, richer flavor that adds complexity to your baked goods.

I go over how to brown butter in detail in my post on overnight sourdough chocolate chip cookies. So hop on over there to read the detailed description on how to do that. It also has a ton of pictures to show you all the stages of the butter browning.

After the butter is browned, just let it cool a little so it doesn’t cook the eggs when you pour it into the wet ingredients.

I usually use salted butter, but if you use unsalted butter, just make sure you add a pinch of salt into the recipe.

*I think as a dairy alternative, you could swap the melted butter out for coconut oil. It would change the flavor, but would probably do the same job to make these healthy banana rhubarb muffins.

Mash the ripe sweet bananas

I absolutely love recipes where I can use 5 ripe bananas. How many times do you have a ton on hand, but don’t want to make multiple batches of a recipe that only calls for 2 bananas!? This recipe is a great way to use them up when you have a lot on hand!

The bananas I used for these muffins weren’t super overripe, with just a sprinkling of brown spots. I often let my bananas go until they are almost black because the darker they are, the sweetness of the banana is heightened. But these ones worked perfectly well and really offset the tartness of the rhubarb!

When I have ripe bananas and I know I want to use them within a couple days, but don’t want them to attract fruit flies, I normally throw them in the fridge. If I know I want to keep them longer, I will peel them and freeze them in a zip top freezer bag. The best way to do it is to add the amount of bananas you’ll need for a specific recipe all into one bag. It makes it so easy to pull out that bag from the freezer and use it right away!

Just mash them up with a potato masher in a large mixing bowl. This one was passed down from my grandma to my mom, and from my mom to me. I love it!!

Whisk wet ingredients + white sugar

Add the white sugar, vanilla extract, room temperature large eggs, applesauce, and melted butter and whisk really well. (You can see that I take my browned butter pretty far. I was actually worried that this one was burned but it tasted amazing. Whew!). This is your chance to make sure it’s all super incorporated so mix, mix, mix.

You could also use brown sugar for this recipe. I think that would even add more complexity to the flavor! I think even coconut sugar might be a great alternative to refined sugar if you’re looking to swap that out.

Add dry ingredients

I was making these in a huge hurry because we had company coming over, so I completely forgot to sift! Normally, I’d put my metal strainer over the bowl and add my dry ingredients to that and use the whisk to push it all through. That way you make sure all the lumps are out of the dry ingredients.

If you live in a high humidity area like we do in Northeast Ohio, that’s especially important because the flour and baking soda and salt can begin to clump up if they have any humidity in the bag or container.

After you add the flour mixture into the large bowl, you’ll want to whisk it as little as you can to get it all evenly mixed up. Flour contains gluten and when you make bread, you knead it because you want to develop the gluten.

However with cookies or muffins or pancakes, you don’t want that gluten developed because it leads to a tough product. So if you want tender muffins, mix until all the flour is incorporated but then stop as soon as you reach that point.

*As a side note, I often make these with 2c. all purpose flour and 1c. whole wheat flour or whole grain spelt flour and they don’t really taste wheaty at all!

Fold in rhubarb

After I took this photo, I grabbed my rubber spatula and folded in the rhubarb. Again, you want to do this until the rhubarb is throughout the batter, but gently fold it so that it doesn’t overmix the batter.

Put banana rhubarb muffin batter into muffin cups

I use a 24 hole muffin tray like this one and I absolutely love it!! I used to bake in every hole, so I could do 24 muffins or cupcakes all at once. You can totally do that. Or you can do what I did here and alternate the holes to get the higher dome on your muffins. They are so much fluffier and airier that way.

I also think these would be great as mini muffins, but you’ll need to make sure you chop the tart rhubarb really tiny so you don’t get a huge bite in a tiny muffin!

I tend to buy my muffin cups in bulk because we use them a lot around here. These are the cupcake liners I use. I like them in both white and Kraft color. They come in a pack of 500 so I don’t have to think about buying them very often!

My daughter owns a wedding cake and cupcake company, so she tends to use the Kraft color a lot. Isn’t that color of liner absolutely beautiful?

Line the muffin tins and spoon batter in the lined cups until they are about 2/3 full. I use a muffin scoop and it helps me to get them more evenly sized but you can also use a regular spoon. So, just spoon batter into the lined cups. This recipe makes about 22 muffins.

Sprinkle with raw sugar

I love turbinado sugar, or raw sugar sprinkled on top of cupcakes and muffins. It gives it that crunchy top that makes the muffins extra special. I don’t think it adds a ton of sweetness, but you can absolutely back down the sugar in the muffin batter if you’d like to offset the sugar on top.

Bake

I bake these muffins in a 350 degree oven for 19 minutes. Every oven is slightly different and may be a little off, so it gives a different baking time. You might want to keep an oven thermometer in the oven to make sure it’s an accurate temperature.

If you’re not alternating holes in between the muffins, you may have to bake them for a different amount of time. I’d say it will take 16-22 minutes so check them early and then let them go if they aren’t done yet. They are done when you insert a toothpick into them and it comes out clean.

Cool and serve your banana rhubarb muffins

Cool the rhubarb banana muffins on a wire rack. Can you eat these hot? Yes. They’re super yummy that way. However, they tend to stick to the liners a TON when you eat them hot or warm. I find that when I cool them down, they come off the liners really easily.

These rhubarb banana muffins are a perfect balance of sweet and tart. They’re a sweet treat and are perfect for breakfast or an afternoon snack the whole family will love.

Store these rhubarb banana muffins in an airtight container. They should keep in the sealed container for about a 3-4 days, but they always do better in the fridge. Alternately, you can freeze them and pull them out for a quick breakfast.

Can I make the banana rhubarb muffins in a loaf pan?

Absolutely! Can I tell you a secret? This was originally my go-to recipe for banana bread. I adapted it for muffins. Then I added the rhubarb. So you can certainly make it in a bread pan since that was the original recipe!

You can grease 2 loaf pans and divide the batter between the two. Sprinkle the tops with raw sugar. Bake for 50-60 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Banana rhubarb bread!

What are some variations I can make?

Like I mentioned above, this original recipe is my banana bread recipe. So you can absolutely leave out the rhubarb and make it into banana bread or banana muffins. They are delicious.

You can also replace the rhubarb with 1c of mini chocolate chips. I can’t say that they are as healthy as the rhubarb version, but they taste spectacular! Like really, really good.

You could also replace the rhubarb with any berries you had on hand. Blueberries, raspberries, diced strawberries… That would make a fruity muffin that would be so yummy.

How do I store banana rhubarb muffins?

I wait until the banana rhubarb muffins cool completely and then I store them in either a gallon zip top bag, or an airtight container for about 3-4 days. Since this recipe makes 22 muffins, if I’m not making them for company, I’ll take half of them and immediately freeze them in a sealed container for another breakfast or afternoon snack down the road. They store really well in the freezer and taste super fresh and delicious as long as they are airtight.

Can I use frozen rhubarb in these muffins?

I don’t see why not! If you do, I’d put the rhubarb in totally frozen because as it begins to thaw, it gets really watery. So put the rhubarb in frozen and then scoop out the batter and cook them right away. If you feel like the frozen rhubarb made them too moist, you can always omit the applesauce in the recipe the next time you make them. That probably would help to offset it.

Can I cut this recipe in half?

That would work just fine! I’d use 3 small bananas or 2 large bananas if I were to cut this recipe in half. Everything else is pretty easily divided.

That’s it! I hope you absolutely love these muffins as much as we do. I’d love to hear how you like them, and especially any variations you make to them!

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