As I mentioned a few posts ago I made a really nasty Blood Orange Tart the other night and tonight I feel as if I've redeemed myself. I decided to go with something simple and made plain old banana muffins but I used a new recipe and tweaked it just a tiny bit. I found the recipe at honeyandjam.blogspot.com which is a sweet (no pun intended) little blog I've been following for a couple months. The recipe itself is a Martha Stewart original but these are the best banana muffins I've ever put in my face. She suggests topping them with some cinnamon honey frosting but again I was going easy on myself after last week's disappointment, I wish I had taken photos of the tart I destroyed but I was too sad/sick from trying to eat it. Anyway, I decided to start posting a recipe of the month which will be tried and tested by me with photos to prove my ultimate success or failure. I think this might inspire me to bake more and ingest more sugar. Tonight I will be posting my first recipe which is the Martha Stewart Banana Muffins which I have renamed:
Ba-nay-nay Muffins
kind of like Sha-nay-nay...say it with attitude people
1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
3/4 cup of sugar*
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups of mashed banana (approx. 4 bananas, the riper the better)
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a standard muffin tin with paper liners, or just grease and flour the muffin tin instead of using paper.
2. In a medium bowl or mixer whisk together your flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. Make a little well in the center of your flour mixture and put the butter, banana, eggs and vanilla in the well.
4. Mix everything together to incorporate the flour mixture (if using an electric mixture be sure to scrape the bottom of your bowl!) Do not overmix.
5. Divide the batter evenly into muffin cups.
6. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean (approx. 25-30 mins) and remove those babies from the muffin tin and let cool on a wire rack.
2. In a medium bowl or mixer whisk together your flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. Make a little well in the center of your flour mixture and put the butter, banana, eggs and vanilla in the well.
4. Mix everything together to incorporate the flour mixture (if using an electric mixture be sure to scrape the bottom of your bowl!) Do not overmix.
5. Divide the batter evenly into muffin cups.
6. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean (approx. 25-30 mins) and remove those babies from the muffin tin and let cool on a wire rack.
* I use a mix of half organic sugar and half ginger sugar which I obtained from working at a chocolate shop where my job was to rub together pieces of candied ginger before dipping them in chocolate. I kept the sugar that came off the candied ginger and use it in baking sometimes. You can find candied sugar in bulk stores and all you need to do is rub a few pieces together in your hands over a bowl and collect the sugar the falls off. Make sure you pass the sugar through a sieve to get out any small chunks of ginger. So if you have some bananas lying around that are starting to turn black and nasty keep in mind that those are the best bananas for muffins and bread. If you aren't going to use them right away just peel those bad boys, put them in a tupperware container and throw them in the freezer to use later. You can also throw chocolate chips (white chocolate chips are awesome), coconut or raisins into your batter if you're into that sort of thing. I was going to try some chopped dried apricots but I got lazy.
