Banana and dark chocolate muffins

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Banana and dark chocolate muffins

What do you do when you have several over-ripe bananas on your hands, a sweet tooth and a hunger? You mash them up and put them in baked goods. 

For some time I stayed away from bananas in muffins and cakes because they gave my baked goods a stodginess I don't like. However, by cutting down the amount of bananas used and tweaking ingredients here and there, I've managed to make something spongy and delectable.

Recipe's my own:

(Makes 6 medium muffins)

3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
4 oz chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate
1 ripe medium banana
2 medium eggs
2 tablespoons ricotta
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup melted butter (1/2 stick)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Mash up the banana with a fork - if this isn't easy to do, your banana wasn't ripe enough. 

In one bowl, mix all the wet ingredients - butter (make sure it's not hot after nuking it in the microwave!) eggs, vanilla, ricotta and the banana. Give it a good mix with an egg beater and set aside.

In another bowl (ok, I used the same one...) mix the dry ingredients - the flour, sugar, pinch of salt, baking powder and chopped chocolates. Give it a good toss.

Pour in the wet ingredients and mix only until the dry spots are gone. Don't over mix - you will get stodgy unappetizing muffins.

Spoon into a greased muffin pan or a pan lined with paper cups. I just gave my new pan a spray of grapeseed oil and that worked out very well. 

Pop in to the middle rack of the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden. 

These were so good I wanted to name each individual muffin. But I already ate Sarah, pictured above.