Chocolate Chip Banana Nut Muffins - ARF/5-a-day

chocolate-chip banana-nut muffins, chocolate cupcake, and baby bananas

First off, I will try to explain the picture above as the picture may not be worth 1000 words in this case. I don't want any of my blog readers thinking I burnt the muffins :).

The regular light brown looking things are the chocolate-chip banana nut muffins. The dark chocolate cupcake you see above is what I made from my leftover chocolate cupcake batter from last Sunday. I had put the extra in the refrigerator, tightly covered in a container. Before I baked it, I put it in the microwave defrost cycle for a couple of minutes until it regained its consistency. I added some white chocolate chips on top of the cupcakes. On to the bananas. I think this variety of bananas are called baby-bananas. These are NOT the bananas I used in the recipe. They are the smaller version bananas and I bought from the Oriental store last week. These bananas are slender and only about 4-5 inches in length. The skin of these bananas is very thin compared to the thick flesh of the regular bananas. I also feel that these bananas taste a LOT sweeter than the regular bananas. In Telugu, my native language, these are called "chekkara keli" (chekkara meaning sugar, keli meaning banana originated from the Hindi word "kela" meaning banana).

Now on to my post, I try to participate in Cate's ARF/5-a-day that happens every Tuesday as much as I can. My previous entries to this event were Kiwi jam, Quesadillas and Guacamole, Yu Choy dal/lentils, Spinach chutney with chapathi chips, Penne with creamy veggie sauce.

This week though, Cate put a twist to the whole thing. She asked us bloggers to find ARF/5-a-day worthy recipes from other food bloggers site. As soon as I saw that, I thought to myself, "that is going to be easy" but alas as you will read below, it wasn't easy choosing what to make.

On Sunday afternoon I set the laptop on the dining table and started blog hopping. After a few minutes, I was over whelmed with a plethora of choices to choose from. A realization sunk in that I need to do something else than just blog hopping to figure this out. I made up a condition for myself to make this easier. I decided that I would have to come up with something that uses ingredients that I already had on hand.

I got up, glanced at the raw materials in the refrigerator, peeked in the cabinets to see what I had on hand. Now, once again I started blog hopping. Few more minutes later, I was even more confused on what I was going to make. Then my eyes fell on the bananas that were on the banana holder on the table on the counter. I noticed that they were I had 3 bananas that were a little on the ripe side, and one overly ripe banana (very squishy to touch) kind. I knew exactly what I was going to make - Banana nut muffins. I have made these muffins a lot of times before but have never ever used the same recipe. That was mostly because, I would forget where I got the recipe from. I then remembered that Saffron Hut had made some banana nut muffins and they looked really good. I looked up the recipe, bookmarked it and went about my day!

I did make modifications to the recipe i.e. made it a little more unhealthy (which is very unlike me :)). I usually try to add healthy ingredients, reduce the unhealthy ingredients when I am baking but today, I did the opposite. Being a chocoholic that I am, I had to add chocolate to this :). Hence they became Banana nut - chocolate chip muffins.

The modifications I made to this recipe are that I added 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of regular sugar instead of the 3/4 regular sugar. Being a spiceaholic that I am, I threw in some nutmeg and cinnamom. I added some good vanilla. As I said above, I added about 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips to the party!

Now to the exact recipe!

Software
---------------

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 ripe bananas (I had 3 medium ripe and 1 overly ripe banana), mashed thoroughly
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup melted butter (unsalted)
• 1 tbsp vanilla
  
• 1/3 cup walnuts, chopped coarsely
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• about 30-36 chocolate chips
  

Hardware
---------------

• one small mixing bowl
• one large mixing bowl
• one muffin tin
• paper muffin cups (optional)

Method
---------------

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
  Sift together all the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon) into the large mixing bowl.
• Mix all the wet ingredients (melted butter, mashed bananas, granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla) in the small mixing bowl (and yes, the sugar is considered a "wet ingredient", atleast according to Alton Brown).
  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix with a fork or spoon so all the ingredients are well incorporated. (or just put on some food safe gloves and mix it up with your hands).
• Set aside 2-3 tbsp of walnuts. Add the rest of the walnuts and the 1/2 cup of chocolate chips into the batter and mix well.
• Put the paper muffin cups in the muffin pan, fill the cups until they are a little more than 3/4 full.
  Add about 2-3 chocolate chips and a few walnuts on top of the 3/4th filled muffin cups.
• Bake them for about 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the muffins are brown on top.

Thank you Saffron Hut for the recipe and thank you Cate for hosting the event.