Banana and Chocolate Muffins!

Yes, this is another chocolate and banana recipe! Bear with me here though, because I guarantee you won't regret making these bananalicious babies! Unlike our previous banana and chocolate post, this one is a lot sweeter, it really makes your sweet tooth - or if you're like me: sweet teeth - ecstatic.

My father should be awarded a prize in the category I just made up in my head called 'Person who buys ALL the bananas when they're on special at Woolworths' category.  It is literally impossible for us to eat all the bananas he buys before they go bad and go all oozy and sugar-spotted and blech.  Bad for my brothers' school lunches but perfect for my 'let's get rid of these festering things in the fruit bowl and turn them into cake' recipes.  When I created this recipe on the spot while trying to get rid of the gross bananas, it was originally a loaf cake.  I made it a few times as a loaf cake but it became really obvious that the cake was WAY too moist and crumbly to slice, so while I was trying to cut it it turned into a pile of crumbs and squish. A delicious pile of crumbs and squish though, to be more accurate.  Just for convenience I decided that to avoid destroying nice things in the future, I'd make them into muffins instead.

Banana and Chocolate Muffins:

100g of caster sugar
150g of butter, softened 
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
2 eggs
1/4 cup of milk
1/2 cup self-raising flour
3 brown bananas, well-mashed
100g of chopped good-quality dark cooking chocolate

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.  Line a muffin tin with paper cases.
Mix butter and caster sugar on high speed until light, pale and fluffy. Add vanilla essence.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Add a little of the milk, alternating adding flour to the mixture, until you achieve a light and fluffy batter, similar to the consistency of the mixture in the first photo in this post.
Add the mashed banana to the cake mixture, folding it in well with a spatula. Don't use the electric mixer for this or you'll over-work the flour.
Add the roughly chopped chocolate and mix through.

Spoon the mixture into prepared muffin tin and bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the muffins comes out clean.

And that's it! Next time you forget about including fruit in your diet because you've been baking too much, just chuck the gross bananas into a cake! Fruit and cake - here at Smorish, we aim to keep your diet balanced.

Enjoy!

Chocolate and banana loaf



 Those who know me know I hate bananas. On their own I find the texture and smell gag worthy. I do however like food that has banana in it; banana bread, banana yo-go, banana milkshakes, banana ice-cream... So perhaps it's the pairing of bananas with a thousand and one other ingredients that makes them, dare I say it- delicious?

We had two lone bananas in our fruit bowl this morning. They looked foul...absolutely nasty, quietly fumigating the kitchen with their scent. They did make a good excuse for baking.

A quick search online and I came across this recipe. With a 5 star rating I gave it a go. Unfortunately I left it in a little too long so it wasn't as moist as I would have liked. I also used wholemeal self-raising flour which gave the cake a bit too much texture so next time I will use white self-raising flour. The flavours were still fantastic and the cake was quick and easy to make so I would recommend giving it a go.