Preheat your oven to 375°F and grease a 12-cup muffin pan or line it with paper liners. While the oven heats, mash the very ripe bananas in a large bowl until you have approximately 2 cups of smooth mash with just a few small lumps remaining—this helps create a tender crumb. Measure out all your other ingredients so everything is ready when you start mixing.

Add the room-temperature eggs, cottage cheese, milk, vanilla extract, coconut sugar, and olive oil to the mashed bananas. Whisk everything together vigorously for about 1-2 minutes until the mixture is well combined and slightly lighter in color—this helps emulsify the oil throughout the batter and creates a more tender muffin. The cottage cheese should break down and incorporate smoothly into the wet base.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, hemp seeds, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. This distributes the leavening agent and spices evenly throughout the dry mixture, ensuring consistent flavor and rise in every muffin. I like to whisk the dry ingredients rather than just stirring them because it aerates the flour slightly and makes folding them in gentler.

Pour the dry ingredient mixture from Step 3 into the wet mixture from Step 2, then gently fold together using a spatula until just barely combined—there should still be some small flour streaks visible in the batter. Overmixing develops gluten and creates tough, dense muffins, so stop folding as soon as you no longer see dry flour. This gentle approach is the key to keeping these muffins tender and moist.

Reserve a small handful of blueberries for topping, then fold the remaining 1 cup of blueberries gently into the batter using minimal strokes. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full—this leaves room for the muffins to rise without overflowing. Place 2-3 reserved blueberries on top of each muffin for a beautiful presentation.

Bake in the preheated 375°F oven for 22-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out with just a few moist crumbs—not dry and not with thick batter clinging to it. Remove from the oven and let the muffins rest in the pan for 10 minutes before turning them out onto a wire cooling rack. This resting time allows the structure to set slightly so they don't fall apart when removed from the pan.