Now that school is back in session, I am back to work caring for eight school aged children, both before and after school. They come to my house as early as 7:00 am, and by 8:00 they are ready for breakfast.

Many times I let the kids help me make muffins, like we did this morning. Some of my favorites are the Betty Crocker brand, and this summer when they were on sale for $1.50 I bought several of each variety. This review is on their Banana Nut Muffin Mix.

Description

The boxes of Betty Crocker muffin mixes are all the same size, this one contains 15.5 ounces. The front of the box pictures two baked muffins, and it is described as a premium mix. It also states that the mix is "great for quick bread" (and the recipe is on the back of the box).

Easy To Make

These muffins can be made in about 30 minutes from start to finish, even with the kids helping. First I preheat my oven to 425 degrees, and while that is heating up I mix the dry ingredient packet with milk, oil and two eggs. After I divide the batter evenly into 12 muffin cups, they bake for around 15 minutes.

Ingredients

Enriched Flour, Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Sugar, Walnut Pieces, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Dried Banana Flakes, Modified Corn Starch, Vital Wheat Gluten, Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Salt, Gum Arabic, Toasted Defatted Wheat Germ, Propylene Glycol Monoesters of Fatty Acids, Mono and Diglycerides, Corn Starch, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Cellulose Gum, Artificial Color, Xanthan Gum, Modified Cream, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Freshness Preserved By Bht

Thoughts

While I can say that this is not my favorite of the Betty Crocker Muffin Mixes, but they do taste pretty close to banana bread. It's also not my daycare kids favorite flavor, they love the blueberry muffins the most. I think it's because they contain canned blueberries that are added to the batter which make them taste more like homemade.

The banana flavor contains dried banana flakes, and while that doesn't sound too tasty, it's actually not bad. Remember how tasty banana chips can be? Similar taste. I always make these into 12 muffins, and they always rise nice and high with a big crown to the top, so they have a very nice look when they come out of the oven. They also make the house smell great while they are baking!

The muffins are pretty moist, but that's probably due to the oil and 2 eggs that need to be added to the mix. They aren't real sweet, but they do taste much better when you melt butter over a hot muffin!

The Diamond walnuts are already added to the dry muffin mix, so when you divide the batter into the muffin tins, you need to be sure that you are trying to get an equal amount of walnuts in each muffin. By the way, one box makes either 12 large muffins, 24 mini muffins, or one loaf of banana bread. There is a recipe for a banana nut bread that does call for one banana to be added to the mix, but I haven't made this yet. I think it would be a quick way to make a homemade tasting banana bread though, and I may try it one of these days.

Nutritionally they are a little high in calories, with 170 per muffin and 7 grams of fat. There are 10 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.

If you like banana bread you might like these muffins, but I think they lack that homemade taste. Still, they are easy and make up fast - they are much quicker than making muffins from scratch.

The Betty Crocker Muffin Mixes have really sky rocketed in price in our area, they are almost $3 a box now, so when I see a sale like I did this summer I always stock up. Coupons used to be available in the Sunday paper, but I haven't seen any for quite some time.

I think these are a bit better than average, so I am rating them with four out of five stars.