'Naner Bread for my Fell0h Monkeys

Pop quiz, hot shot! There are bananas in your apartment. Once the warm weather hits, the bananas ripen extra speedily. If they spot to the point of over-soft, they become unappetizing...

What do you do? What do you do??

No fear. Don't panic. At least they won't explode and blow up everyone on a bus. Instead, blow up everyone's taste buds with their ripened sweetness. Coming up with nothing original, I decided to make, yup you guessed it, banana muffins.

I used to bake every day but those days are long gone. Baking can be a little tricky in that most recipes typically feed a dozen plus. It's dangerous when the aroma fills your home, makes you salivate, and induce hunger whether you are or not. Out of the oven, though piping hot, you sneak a taste-- the first step in quality assurance is all. In the cooling process you continue to nibble despite instructions to 'let cool'. Before you know it, when cooling is finally sufficient, the recipe, meant to serve 12, is three-quarters gone. Oops, not good.

Nonetheless, I woke up early this morning with a mission to bake these rotten bananas. Happy Mama's Day! Homemade gift for me mum. Who says you have to wait for that Sunday in May?..

I modified (greatly) a muffin recipe I found. I don't know if there was ever a recipe I followed to the letter. And contrary to popular belief, baking doesn't have to be exact, especially when the recipe involves ingredients like fruit. '3 or 4 bananas', the recipe lists. Bananas come in a range of different sizes, are these bananas itty-bitties or magnums? And yes, size does matter.. in this case.. and possibly others.. Larger bananas hold more water, for example.

If you don't bake, you should try it. No fear. Ingredients can be cheap and there's not much to lose.

Baking is magical. This is what I love: when the hot box makes raw batter rise..


..and transforms it into something edible..


and voila!



A muffin closeup before being devoured, in a mannerly fashion of course..


This is what a butterflied muffin looks like, in case you were wondering..



And finally, my recipe version (with notes below)..

'Naner Bread/Muffins

1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

4 med-sized bananas, plus one more (equaling 5 bananas total) for muffin tops (optional)
4-5 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 degF. Line a 12-muffin tin with paper cups.
Sift the dry (first four) ingredients together, mix, and make a well.
Mix the wet (the next four) ingredients together.
Pour the wet into the dry.
Gently and slowly mix everything together. DO NOT OVER MIX.
Spoon batter into muffin cups. Bake in middle of rack for 25-30 min. until tooth pick comes out clean or with but a few crumbs.


Notes:
Bread/Muffins: Same difference. For bread, pour everything into a bread pan instead and bake for longer, roughly 50 min.

Tin: I've tried many a silicon products [implants not included]. Metal is better. Period. It just handles heat better.

Flour: I used white (gasp!) flour because the bran in whole wheat usually makes baked goods, like these muffins, heavy, dense, and unpalatable. Adjust bran to taste.

Sugar: I used white (gasp!). It's a baked good. It needs sugar of some form for taste and sugar helps make the muffin lighter (in texture) and hence more palatable.

Topping: I had 5 bananas on me. Five in the batter would have been too much. Slicing the last banana for the muffin tops worked as it added extra sweetness and provided a visual cue to indicate what 'flavor' the muffins were. Alternative topping could also include walnuts/pecan or shaved chocolate.

Egg: I used an extra large egg because that's what I had. When a baking recipe calls for eggs, they typically mean large eggs. For the egg, I actually separated the white and yolk. I beat the white til pretty frothy, or til I felt like not whisking it anymore, in efforts to maximize muffin lightless. And I used only about 3/4 of the yolk-- can't yet bring myself to use the whole thing. I used it though because I think it would help in browning. Next time I might try omitting the egg though for a vegan version.

Mixing: I added about a 1/4 cup extra flour to the original recipe because the (wet) banana mixture looked as though it almost exceeded in volume the dry mix. As I mixed, or more properly, folded everything together it seems like it was going to be too dry. But I folded slowly, allowing the flour to do its thing and absorb the bananas' moisture at its own pace. Eventually everything came together nicely. The batter was pretty thick but had to be for a good rise. I used two spoons to distribute the batter.

Hit me up with questions if you have them.

Happy Healthy Juicy!