School is back which means so too are the travelling and left behind bananas. If you have bruised or over-ripe bananas at the end of the week, don’t throw them out. Use them in this choc chip banana muffin recipe – the riper the banana, the sweeter the muffins will be!
Muffins are great for a lunch box snack, after-school snack, heck, even breakfast if you’re in a hurry out the door – a muffin that you can just grab and go is great. And because it’s banana based, all the better – it’s FRUIT after all!
Choc chips are optional, kind of
I said what I said… choc chips are optional. If you are against giving your kids extra sugar or whatever your reasoning, rest assured, you can leave those little knobbly chocolate chips out. But choc chip banana muffins are *chef’s kiss* good (dare I say better) with them in, giving muffins little pools of chocolate in every bite.
Look, no liners!
With many schools making a move towards waste-free lunch boxes, you can skip the muffin liners by using a silicone muffin tray. You can buy them cheaply from most stores, including Kmart. Check out the Kmart 6 Cup Silicone Muffin Pan, $6. A couple of these will take care of most muffin recipes!
It’s often said that you don’t need to grease silicone bakeware but I always grease mine just to err on the side of caution – there’s nothing more frustrating than your baking sticking to the pan.
Choc chip banana muffin recipe
Makes: 12 muffins
Ingredients
- 65g butter
- 2 cups self-raising flour
- ½ cup caster sugar
- Pinch of salt
- ½ cup milk
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla essence
- 2 ripe bananas
- 150g chocolate chips
Method
- Preheat the oven to and prepare the muffin trays by greasing them with melted butter, oil spray or using paper muffin liners.
- In a microwave-safe jug, melt the butter until completely melted and set it aside to cool slightly. You could also do this on the stovetop using a small saucepan over medium-low heat.
- In a mixing bowl, add the self-raising flour, the caster sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix together until well combined and set aside.
- In a small bowl, mash the bananas. The easiest way to mash a banana is by slicing it first into a bowl and then mashing it with a fork. The more you squash it, the softer it gets.
- Add to the butter the milk, vanilla and eggs, whisking well until combined.
- From your flour and sugar mix, make a well in the centre and pour the butter mixture in followed by the mashed bananas and finally, the chocolate chips.
- Mix together using a light-handed fold with a wooden spoon, gently combining until no dry flour is left. Don’t be tempted to use an electric mixer or beat the mixture together. Over-mixing causes tough choc chip banana muffins!
- Divide the mixture between the muffin holes until they’re around two-thirds filled.
- Bake the choc chip banana muffins for 15 to 20 minutes until their top surface has turned a beautiful golden colour and they spring back lightly when touched in the middle. (Be careful of melted chocolate though – HOT!).
- Remove the trays from the oven and let the choc chip banana muffins cool in their trays for five minutes before turning them out onto a wire cooling rack. This allows the muffins to ‘set’ into shape.
- Store in an airtight container for up to five days. Alternatively, you can pop them straight into the freezer.
MINI MUFFIN TIP: You can turn most muffin recipes into mini-muffins! If you want mini choc chip banana muffins, just divide this mixture between mini-muffin pans and cook them for around 10 minutes or until cooked through. Bite-sized sweet treats!
Do your family love a good muffin recipe? Let us know your favourite muffin flavour and we might just post the recipe for everyone to give it a go!
