Banana Muffins
Photo by Gabrielle Geiselman
There are 7,890,000 results that come up when you Google “Banana Bread Recipe” so I am comfortable with the possibility that you may not be in the market for a new one. I am also comfortable with the possibility that, right this very second, between overcooking at Thanksgiving and overstressing over Christmas you also have a bunch of bananas turning brown and spotty and all “Ewwwww, i don’t want to eat one of thooooose!” on your counter right now.
Photo by Gabrielle Geiselman
I have discovered, in the extensive research of my very own opinion, that banana bread is popular for two reasons. The first reason is that it is called bread but we all know it is really cake. So you can make it for breakfast or eat it in the middle of the day and you don’t gain as many calories as you would if you were really eating cake. Fact.
The second is that no one eats all of their bananas before they rot. Also a fact. Bananas come in handy little bundles and I suspect there are very few among us who are comfortable de-bundling them and only taking the bananas we need until we next go to the store — which is three. As a result we have too many bananas, not enough time and we want cake for breakfast. Am I making sense yet?
So what exists at the intersection of millions of Banana Bread recipes and lots of rotten bananas? One, simple, easy, tasty banana muffin. That is all you need. Tell the other 7,889,999 recipes that you’re good. You’ve got this one.
Photo by Gabrielle Geiselman
There are a couple of things to know to make this recipe so simple and so perfect: First of all, because there are only a few ingredients, they all have to be super fresh – except for the bananas. You want half of them to be solid brown and nasty. The other half should be yellow with brown spots. I don’t know why that matters but it does. The other thing you have to do is make sure not to overmix the batter – blend just enough to combine and then sit back and relax. Very lastly make sure to preheat your oven fully and fill each muffin cup with an equal amount of batter. That way when they come out they all look super nice and if you have a friend who is an amazing photographer she can take a cool picture of them all lined up in front of her matching red tea kettle. We all have those friends, right?
So embrace your rotten bananas (but not too hard). Line up those muffin cups. You can even claim the credit, I don’t mind. Statistically speaking I think this combination of ingredients exists out there in the virtual world anyway.
Go. Eat cake bread.
- 6 bananas (3 extremely brown overripe ones and 3 just a little overripe ones)
- 1 1/2 sticks (170g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 3 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 3/4 cups (225 grams) all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups (300g) sugar
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line up 20 paper muffin liners. Spray the insides with a baking spray and put them in sets of 10 on a baking sheet
- In a medium mixing bowl mash the bananas with the back of a fork leaving several big lumps. Then add the sugar, melted butter, eggs and vanilla and stir.
- Sift together the flour and baking soda then add to the wet banana mixture in two stages mixing just until blended each time.
- Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full. It should fill 24....but it might not. No sweat.
- Bake for about 25 mins.
- I love these paper muffins cupsfrom Paper Eskimo.
Ann L Cook
April 2, 2017 at 17:50I want to “rave” over this recipe. I tried two recipes I found on google, poor outcome (too dry, no flavor). Following the guidance in this one – for “black bananas” and “overripe bananas” – resulted in fantastic, moist, flavorful muffins. This is a terrific, efficient solution for overripe bananas as you state in your article. Is it possible to freeze the “bananas gone bad” and thaw them later for muffin preparation? What do you advise? Thank you for such a DELICIOUS solution. Ann L Cook
jessica
April 9, 2017 at 20:27Hi Ann! I’m so pleased to hear that. I’m not sure about baking it with frozen bananas – I know a lot of people who freeze “bananas gone bad” and then use them in smoothies but I’ve never tried it in baking. I’ll ask around and maybe try it myself and come back to you. Happy Sunday!