Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins on an Antique Celery Plate.
I’m pretty sure the plate is happy with it’s new, upgraded occupants.
These muffins are a great lesson in making due with what you have rather than running to the store. Don’t get me wrong, I run to the store plenty…I’m there almost every day…..but it was raining and I was annoyed and didn’t want to go out again.
No walnuts for banana bread? Make muffins. No sour cream? Use yogurt. Not enough yogurt? Add milk.
Make due with what you have. Then add chocolate.
Here’s what you need:
Ripe Bananas (I actually used 3), Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Salt, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Chocolate Chips, Yogurt (plain or vanilla), and Milk.
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Two cats have snuck into my ingredient photo. That’s Scooter on the right…she’s almost 18 so she can sit in any photo that she likes.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Melt 1 stick of butter in the microwave or on the stove and allow it to cool slightly.
Grab a large mixing bowl and a sifter or large strainer. Sift 3 cups of flour with 1 Tablespoon of Baking Powder, 1 teaspoon of Baking Soda, and 1 teaspoon of Salt.
This is probably the best baking tip I’ve ever learned. To get your baked goods to rise and be light and fluffy, sift your main dry ingredient (flour) with the leavening ingredients (baking powder and soda). This helps to distribute the leavening ingredients thoroughly and completely throughout dough.
It’s an easy and quick step and makes a big difference. If you don’t have either a sifter or strainer, you can use a whisk or even a fork and some good old stirring to combine the flour with the baking powder & soda.
Add 1/2 cup of sugar to the mixture. If you want, you can also sift in the sugar but it gets stuck in the small mesh of my strainer so I add it later.
In a small bowl, mix 1 (6 ounce) container of yogurt with 3/4 cup of milk. I had intended to use plain yogurt, but I only had vanilla. It turned out to be a fine substitution.
Add 2 eggs and whisk to break up the yolks and combine with the wet ingredients.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the milk/yogurt/egg mixture.
Stir only a few times until the batter is about 1/2 way mixed.
Now add the melted butter. By mixing in the eggs first and then adding the butter, we make sure that any butter that is still a bit warm won’t scramble the eggs.
Stir a few more times until most of the flour is mixed in but the batter is still very lumpy. Do not over stir.
Peel and smash up 3 very ripe, soft bananas. You want 1 1/2 cups of mashed banana for these muffins.
I like to use my potato masher. It’s quick and easy. You could also use a fork but get them good and smashed up.
Now for the good stuff. Take 1 cup of your favorite chocolate chips. For me, that is Ghirardelli Bittersweet 60% Cacao Chocolate Chips. They’re not too sweet and as a bonus, they are about twice the size of other chocolate chips. Add a pinch of flour to the chocolate chips (a little less than a Tablespoon) and mix it in.
This will keep the chips from clumping together in the batter.
Add the mashed bananas and chocolate chips to the batter.
Now, stir everything gently together just until it is combined. The batter will still be a bit lumpy and that’s okay. Don’t be tempted to stir until it is smooth or you will have muffins like hockey pucks. The less you stir, the better.
Grease or spray muffin tins and fill them 3/4 full with batter.
Be sure each muffin gets some chocolate chips. As you get to the end of the bowl of batter, and there may not be enough chocolate chips to go around, go ahead and poke a few extra chips into the last few muffins. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be the person who gets the last, sad little muffin with no chocolate chips.
Bake at 375 for 20 minutes until golden brown. You can double check for doneness by sticking a toothpick into the center of a muffin. If it comes out clean and not sticky, you’re good to go.
Cool the muffins in the pans for 5 minutes so they will hold their shape. Then remove from the pans and cool on baking racks.
Or eat them warm right from the pan in all their hot, gooey, melted chocolate glory.
Even though they have chocolate, these are not overly sweet muffins. Tender, moist and lots of great banana flavor.
And chocolate. The way it should be.
Here’s the recipe:
4 Responses
There are so many things I love about this post…first, that it’s banana chocolate chip muffins (love them…got SO mad at Starbucks when they stopped making them), second, those chocolate chips are my favorite (I may or may not eat them as a snack on their own. A lot.), and third, I love the tip about flouring the chips – so good to know. 🙂
Ha! I can’t have an open bag of those chocolate chips in the house. Dangerous! I learned the flouring trick works for blueberries in muffins too. That way your batter doesn’t turn all purple. Muffins rule.