Improving on a Classic, Part Two: Banana Muffins

A few months ago I told you abut my family’s banana bread recipe and how I’ve pretty completely altered it to have less sugar, almost no white flour and plenty of whole-grainy goodness. For a few weeks there it seemed like I always had exactly two bananas getting old on the counter, where I tend to like three for my big banana bread recipe. What’s more, that recipe makes three little loaves, and when it’s just the three of us we can’t really eat three loaves before getting sick of it.

So I decided to try yet another version of this “classic” and make it into muffins. This is basically just a half recipe of the bread, and the way I did it made 10 regular-sized muffins, which is plenty for us to eat for breakfast twice. If you made the muffins a bit smaller you might be able to get 12, but I’m OK with not filling the whole pan.

What You’ll Need

• 1 tablespoon melted butter
•  1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg or equivalent egg substitute
• 2 mashed ripe bananas
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup wheat flour
• 1/2 cup white flour
• muffin tin and papers

I didn’t include the spices from my other version, mostly because I was in a hurry and forgot. I’d throw a pinch of cinnamon or apple pie spice into the next batch. I took out the flax meal just for ease of measuring, though you could do a quarter cup each of white flour and flax if you wanted. There are no nuts here because I had none in my house, but a quarter cup or so wouldn’t be out of line.

I lined my muffin cups with paper, but spraying them with cooking spray wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

What You’ll Do

Preheat oven to 350. Mix sugar and butter in a bowl (you can do all this by hand) then add milk and egg. Stir some more, then add mashed bananas and stir.

I usually just dump all my dry ingredients in at once and stir them up, but you could do it the fancy way and put your dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then add the wet to the dry and mix. Nuts go in last, when the mixture is mostly well incorporated.

Mix until all the flour is mixed in, but not any more than that. Divide into muffin tin holes and bake 15 to 20 minutes (mine took 17, but your oven will vary). Allow to cool slightly in the pan, then cool completely on a wire rack.

Eat with the knowledge that even a small supply of overripe bananas need not go to waste.