banana muffins
rating:
These are a firm favourite in our house, and we make them often. I've been refining the recipe for a while, and I think this is now as good as it gets. I use one of those new-fangled silicon muffin "tins" for these - it saves greasing and paper cases and so forth.
Beware - they don't seem to keep well; we eat them pretty much all immediately!
The batter will freeze successfully.
75g melted butter
250g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
115g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large, ripe bananas
2 medium eggs
4fl oz milk
2 tsps honey
optional:
sunflower seeds
more caster sugar
Pre-heat oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.
Melt the butter and allow to cool. Do this in a sufficiently large bowl to add the other stuff further down, and save washing up!
Mash the bananas.
Sift flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large bowl, add caster sugar and stir through.
Beat together the eggs, vanilla extract, melted butter and milk in a second bowl. Add the mashed banana and stir through.
Stir this mixture into the flour *gently* - no need to worry about lumps, just make sure it's all combined.
Set paper cases into the moulds, or grease the moulds well with a little extra oil or butter and spoon in the mixture until almost full. Or use a silicon tray, as I do - saves more time :)
I dust the muffins with some more (golden) caster sugar and some pumpkin seeds before I put them in the oven.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the muffins come away from the side of the pan when touched. Rest the muffin tray on a wire rack for five minutes then remove the muffins and leave on the rack for another five minutes before serving.
