Recipe: Best Banana and Chocolate Muffins

Oh, bananas!  A fruit that people either love or hate.  A bit like Marmite.  I buy them because I like them, just when the green goes over to light yellow, and before they turn ‘pappy’ and are dappled with brown spots.  I’d rather eat them when they’re on the green side, than the ripe, dark yellow.  But another family member likes them when they’re just starting to spot, and another has a one day window when he’ll eat them.  Bananas seem to tread a fine line, and if I don’t whizz them up as smoothies in the blender with some milk, oats and cinnamon, they end up in cakes.  Usually in banana and chocolate muffins!

This is a recipe a friend passed on to me, from another friend of hers.  Now, I’m not a lover of over-sweet things, and find shop-bought cakes and cookies are usually so sweet they burn my throat, so I usually make adjustments to recipes.  The first time I made these I followed the original recipe, which contained 250g sugar (over twice what I use) and 200g chocolate (again, double the amount I use...but sometimes I’m indulgent and do double the chocolate measure).  I found it was too sweet, bearing in mind there is so much naturally sweet banana already in the recipe.  The second time I made them, I cut the sugar and the chocolate right down without telling my family, and nobody noticed a lack of sweetness!  There was no effect on the rise or bake of the muffins, so I’ve stayed with this slightly healthier option, and everyone loves it.


Ingredients:

4 ripe bananas
140g butter
100g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
250g self-raising flour
100g plain (dark) chocolate (or chocolate chips)


Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 ̊ C, 350 ̊ F, or Gas Mark 4.

Pop some muffin cases into a muffin tin (mine takes 12).

Bash hell out of a sealed bar of plain chocolate on the work surface, and then turn it out onto a board.  Chop the chocolate into little chunks, as large or small as you like.  I chop mine around the same size as chocolate chips.

Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until creamy.  Peel the bananas and mash them in another bowl.  Crack the two eggs into the bowl containing the butter/sugar mixture, and sift half of the flour into the bowl.  Mix gently.  Then add the mashed banana; this helps to loosen up the mix.

Next, sift in the remaining flour and beat well, introducing as much air into the mix as possible (you can use an electric beater if you like, but I always do this with a wooden spoon.  It’s satisfying...!).  You should have a creamy and subtly shiny mixture.  Add the chocolate to the deliciously fragrant mix and then give it another good beat.

Spoon the banana and chocolate mixture into the muffin cases so that they’re even, and pop them into the middle of the oven for 40-45 minutes.

 As they cook, family members will appear from the deepest, darkest recesses of their rooms and say, ‘Mmmmm...  Something smells wonderful...’
Take the muffins out of the oven when they are golden and remove them from the tin to cool on a wire rack.  They will start to disappear...

Result:



These muffins always turn out well, and taste great, especially if you double the chocolate content (but I don’t as I’m trying to be healthy!).  Tonight, we ate one with a cup of tea, and they were (and I quote) ‘very nice, moist, not too sweet and had a nice texture’.  Consistently a hit in our household, and a 'Hall of Famer', I’d recommend you have a go at baking these simple, but beautiful banana and chocolate muffins.  You could even add some walnuts...




Why not give them a try and come back and tell us how they turned out, especially if you add a little something extra?