As a newbie in the kitchen, I’m learning that there is no easier food ingredient to find a use for than a ripened banana. I wonder if everyone has their favorite food ingredient? All I can say is that the sight of a browning banana makes my mouth water for banana bread, muffins, caramelized pancake topping! It’s a very versatile fruit.
I can’t stand the texture of bananas, but I love, love, love the scent. Something about the mush of it makes me gag, but I still force myself to eat half portions most times. It’s usually the maximum amount I can stomach.
Two very ripe bananas last week presented me with a chance to bake once again. I feel like it’s been awhile for some reason, even though I spent 3-4 hours in the kitchen the day before Easter baking a homemade cheesecake and a corn soufflé. Maybe because there was a purpose behind those goodies, to provide for the holiday feast. This time, though, with the bananas, it was all for fun.
As bananas ripen, their starch converts to sugar at an exponential rate. In lab tests, we found that heavily speckled bananas had nearly three times the amount of fructose (the sweetest of the sugars in fruit) than less spotty bananas.
~ Cook’s Illustrated
Is this common knowledge? Not to me! So this is why banana bread recipes always call for very ripe bananas. Otherwise, your bread could come out rather bland. Wow, I have a lot to learn. But let’s bake up some chocolatey stuff first…we’ll learn the food science stuff later.
Mini Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 large bananas, mashed
¾ cup white sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, melted
¼ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla
1 cup milk chocolate chips
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat muffin pans with non-stick spray.
- Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- In a large bowl, combine bananas, sugar, egg, melted butter, cinnamon, and vanilla.
- Add flour mixture and beat until smooth. Add chocolate chips.
- Scoop into muffin pans and bake for 13-15 minutes (for larger muffins, bake for 25-30)
background: baked for 15 minutes
foreground: baked for 13 minutes
What a difference two minutes makes!
ooey-gooey chocolatey chocolate chips
*I found this base recipe on a handful of websites and blogs, actually, so there is no source being cited here. None of those, however, included chocolate chips in the recipe. The addition of the chips doesn’t make me a culinary genius, I know this, but only two things can make almost anything taste better: Bacon or Chocolate Chips. Bacon didn’t seem appropriate with bananas, though. CHOCOLATE WINS.
For a delicious banana bread recipe, try this one: Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Banana Bread. (It involves not only loads of chocolate, but also powdered sugar. Yum!)
Two Girls and a Road 
oooh there’s nothing better than over-ripe bananas and chocolate chips. Love it, thanks!
You’re welcome!
One of the things I really enjoy doing in the kitchen is baking and making salads. I LOVE baking… But unfortunately I can’t afford baking as I am trying to control my weight, and my mother would not appreciate a fat daughter either! Or fat herself… hehe [:
I’m fortunate in that I’ve never had to worry about weigh gain (I am only NOW at a normal weight, naturally was always very thin). But thin doesn’t mean healthy! I don’t exercise and I eat whatever I want – that can’t be good. I hope you find some recipes that can help you keep a healthy weight and your baking fixes, too!
Hehe recipes that are not related to sugar, butter and things like that! Haha, and no, mine is the opposite, I have to exercise daily to maintain my ok weight. [:
And yes I do know some people who are very thin, my cousin for example is thin too, but she exercises regularly,and that is how she maintains her curves.
But I should sneak around and bake something, we can share recipes sometime! 😀
absolutely!
😉
Also, there was a time when I couldn’t bake for myself – so I baked for others, just to get the need to make something out of my system! Take something to work as a surprise or to a neighbor who could use a pick-me-up. Believe me, I always looked forward to potlucks at work as it gave me a reason to bake something and give it to people I knew would enjoy it!
Hehe [: true that!
I eat enough bananas to make a monkey jealous and love to bake with them even more. I love banana bread with toasted walnuts, coconut and dark chocolate. It’s also great with fresh grated ginger. I also dry the peels and give them to my roses. When the peels are dried, the potassium is available to the roots quicker because it’s more soluble.
I had never heard that about banana peels! Wow – this is like a superfruit.
Pingback: Homemade Muffins « tocookwithlove
Pingback: Mini Chocolate Chip Muffins « muncho mom