Bluenana Muffins

  • Muffins… bread… they are interchangeable, so don’t judge me because the photo screams “bread” while the title reads “muffin”.

    Don’t you always have a couple of browning bananas hanging around on the counter, too spotty to eat?  Hold onto them and let them get more black than yellow, then smoosh them up into this muffin/bread recipe (which can be made in a jiffy).  Next thing you know, you have a muffin that’s full of berrylicious antioxidants and your counter is cleared of ugly, ripening fruit.

    1 1/4 cups milk

    1/2 cup butter, melted and slightly cooled

    2 eggs, lightly beaten

    2 very ripe bananas, mashed

    1/2 teaspoon vanilla

    2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or all-purpose)

    1/2 cup sugar

    1 tablespoon baking powder

    3/4 teaspoons salt

    1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries (or frozen, I guess)

    1 tablespoon turbinado sugar (optional)

    1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

    1. Preheat oven to 400° and spray 15 muffin cup liners with non-stick spray.
    2. In a medium bowl, combine milk, melted butter, eggs, mashed bananas and vanilla.  Whisk until well combined.
    3. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Take 1 tablespoon of flour mixture and sprinkle over berries (in a small bowl).  Pour wet mixture into large bowl with flour mixture, and stir gently 4 – 5 times, then stir in blueberries until mixture is just combined (be careful not to overstir).
    4. Scoop into prepared muffin tins (almost full), and sprinkle turbinado sugar and walnuts over tops of muffins (if desired).  Bake for 17 minutes, until a cake tester pulls out mostly clean and muffins are golden.  (If making a mini loaf of bread, bake for 25 minutes or so.  A large loaf will take about 45 -50 minutes.)

    Tips:

    • Ingredients at room temperature are best… so heat your milk up a bit if need be, and pull your eggs out a bit early so when they are mixed with the warmed butter they don’t cause the butter to clump up.
    • Flour power: whole wheat pastry flour is my new best friend, because it’s healthy but fine-textured (so you don’t feel all “fibery” when eating it).  If you don’t have it on hand, you could use regular (all-purpose) flour, or do 1 1/4 cups of regular flour and a cup of whole wheat flour.
    • More health?  Sure- add in a couple of tablespoons of wheat germ or ground flax seeds!
    • 15 muffins- really?  Yeah.  This recipe makes more than 12, so I make 12 muffins and then either use the extra batter to fill up 10 mini muffin cups or so (bake for like 10 minutes), the mini loaf pans, or even make a giant, hearty pancake in a skillet (with maple syrup, of course).
    • Lined muffin cups are kind of necessary with these guys, since there are so many blueberries going on.  My experience with lots of fruit in a batter is that it can cause the finished product to be hard to release from the pan (the fruit sticks to the sides or bottoms, and then bakes on like there’s no tomorrow… you’ve been there before).  Why not use a muffin liner, and make it the problem of the person eating it to scrape the blueberry guts off the paper?  (I tend to go overboard with blueberries- I added 2 cups to this batch, as evidenced in the picture of the loaf- look at how blue the bottom of it is on the right side.  Blueberries all the way!)
    • Sprinkling flour over the blueberries before adding to the batter?  It’s supposed to help keep them suspended in the batter while it bakes, instead of sinking like a rock to the bottom.  Just stir the tablespoon of flour mixture around the berries so they’re all kind of coated in it.
    • No bananas?  Skip them.  The recipe will be lonely without them, but it will survive.  (Add a bit of orange or lemon zest to the batter for a bit of oomph, if you have it.)
    • Not nuts about nuts?  It’s okay- just omit them and no one will miss them.  But do try to sprinkle the crunchy sugar overtop- and if you don’t have turbinado sugar, use sugar in the raw or Sucanat.
    • Better with age… as long as these are stored in an airtight container, they’ll get yummier on day 2.  Or freeze in individual ziploc bags (like I do) and as they thaw, they’ll essentially get that day 2 texture.  Enjoy!

     

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    June 23rd, 2012 | More Sweets Please | No Comments | Tags: , ,

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