I've been trying to test drive my recipes with people and I took these muffins on a road trip to Ithaca, NY, where we went camping. I think they were a success - we ate 10 muffins in 3 days (I ate most of them, but still).
I originally got the idea of banana chocolate-chunk muffins from Choki (All Hail Choki 🙇). In one of her videos, Choki makes these delicious-looking muffins with mashed up banana and plops a nice big chocolate chunk on the top, which is a good decoration choice. I was intrigued but a little intimidated because her muffins were gluten-free. I tried her recipe and it just wasn't good. My muffins turned out emaciated and kind of dry in texture.
But since I'd never made muffins before, I still wanted to experience the homemade banana chocolate muffin. So I found this great recipe from Just a Taste that includes gluten.
Ingredients
N.B. These amounts will yield about 12-16 muffins, depending on the size of your muffin tray. My muffin tray holds 6 medium-to-large-size muffins so I always got 12 muffins (2 trays' worth).
Dry ingredients
-1.5 cups of all-purpose flour
-1/2 cup white sugar
-1/4 cup light brown sugar
-1 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp salt (I used kosher salt)
Wet Ingredients
-3 large ripe bananas, mashed well
-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
-1 large egg
-1/3 cup vegetable oil
-1/4 cup sour cream
And
-1 cup chocolate chunks, divided
A note on bananas. In my opinion, the riper, the better. I actually have found that the best banana products come from ungodly levels of ripeness. Here is a picture of the 3 bananas I used in my photographed run. I actually wish all 3 were black. My black banana is defrosted from the freezer, where it waited patiently for months.
Recipe
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and lightly oil your muffin tray.
Then, whisk together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl: flour, sugar, light brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt.
In a separate medium bowl, whisk all the wet ingredients: your well-mashed bananas, egg, sour cream, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract.
Add your wet ingredient mix to your dry ingredient mix and stir until just combined.
Then fold in 3/4 cup of chocolate chunks. The remaining 1/4 cup of chocolate will be used later.
Fill up each muffin cavity about three quarters of the way up with your batter. Then use your 1/4 cup of chocolate to place a few chunks on the top of each muffin. Because my muffin tray only holds about one half of the batter, I used up half of this 1/4 cup of chocolate chunks.
Those raw muffins looks pretty cute. Put them in the oven and wait 18-20 minutes. Because my muffins are kinda big, I had to wait 20 minutes. You can always check with a toothpick and if it comes out clean it's ready.
I then waited 5 minutes for the muffins to cool down, transferred them to a container, wiped down the muffin tray a bit, re-oiled, and baked my second batch of muffins, using up the rest of the batter and chocolate chunks.
Results
Here is one muffin, about to be eaten.
Here is a cross section, after I took a bite. Look at all that melted chocolate 🤤
So these are the best muffins I've ever eaten. To be honest, I think that is more because muffins are much better homemade, especially when they're still warm from the oven. But also, banana and chocolate is always a good combination. And I used overripe bananas, which really makes a difference.
I recommend these for breakfast, maybe with a cup of coffee or tea. Let me know if you try making them!
~Avi
Afternote
Hi there, it's Avi/Tuck from the future. I've been making these muffins for friends and family for a couple months now - I even taught my niece to make them :) They've been a hit with everyone and have served as a really tasty and satisfying breakfast, great with a cup of black coffee.
I've recently started tracking my protein intake because I realized I haven't been getting nearly enough protein. Someone of my weight should be getting about 50 grams a day, but I've been getting significantly less than that, mostly because of my focus on baking and eating salads (trying to be healthy 😅). So I'm going to actively and retroactively list the protein of various recipes as I make them.
These muffins are, unsurprisingly, low in protein. However, they're not nothing. Because bananas have a little bit of protein, and chocolate has a sizeable amount of protein, 1 muffin will get you 2 grams. Not nothing, but idk if you'll get thoze #gainz with a muffin-centric diet :)
Afternote #2
Hi there, it's Tuck from the even more future future. I recently started tracking macros (it's a long story). So I will be tracking the calories per serving in my recipes. For this recipe, 1 serving is 1 muffin, and 1 muffin is 291 calories according to my math.
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