Banana and dark chocolate muffins
This week begins “back to school” season in the UK. After six weeks of freedom and less traffic on the commute to work, normality resumes, routines get re-established and lunch boxes are retrieved from the top of the cupboard ready for action again. Autumn is also fast approaching, with cooler days and darker evenings, so it’s slowly becoming more tolerable to get the oven going and bake something sweet (this comes with the caveat that a heatwave is forecast for the coming week with highs of 31°C/88°F in my parts, so I might postpone the baking for a little longer!).
I can be somewhat ambivalent about cake (most of the time I find it too dry and sweet) however I do love bananas so adding them and chocolate into the mix is only ever a recipe for success. I’ve been making Sophie Dahl’s banana bread for a long time now with the addition of chocolate chips. Cutting a thick slice of the fresh loaf, popping it in the toaster and slathering in salted butter is such a delicious thing to behold.
These muffins here are essentially a pocket-sized portable version of Sophie Dahl’s banana bread, with inspiration also coming from Smitten Kitchen’s blueberry muffins. Deb’s perfect blueberry muffins are made moist with the addition of yoghurt or soured cream, and oh so crispy and delicious with a generous sprinkle of brown sugar on top before going into the oven, both ideas that I’ve pinched for this recipe.
The best bananas for this are the really sad ones in your fruit bowl, long past being pleasant to eat as-is but perfectly soft and sweet for using in a muffin. You can also use frozen bananas if that’s your jam (I’m known for hoarding gone-off bananas in the bottom of the freezer much to my husband’s distain) - just allow them to fully defrost before using them. In this recipe I state that the mixture makes 9-12 muffins depending on the size of the muffin case. If you’re making 12, don’t expect them to come out like ginormous coffee shop muffins, rather a smaller but perfectly formed morsel that fills a little hole with a nice cup of tea. Of course if you prefer your muffins on the larger side you can either make 9 slightly larger ones, or double the recipe and go for broke with some larger muffin cases.
Perfect for either a tasty afternoon snack or for popping in someone you love’s lunchbox, these muffins are a lovely treat to have on hand as we slide into the autumn and beyond.
Banana and dark chocolate muffins
Makes: 12 small or 9 larger muffins | Total time: 50 mins | Source: Sophie Dahl / Smitten Kitchen / vicki cooks veggie
Ingredients
3 medium, very ripe, bananas
75g (5 tbsp) unsalted butter
1 large egg
50g (¼ cup) soured cream, Greek yoghurt or natural yoghurt (I’ve tried all three depending on what was in my fridge at the time and they all work)
2tsp vanilla extract
100g (½ cup) soft brown sugar, plus an additional 2 tbsp for sprinkling
½ tsp fine sea salt
200g (1 ½ cups) self-raising flour
200g (7oz) dark chocolate
Paper or silicone muffin cases
(I recommend using the metric weights for this recipe - baking relies heavily on precision and the cup measurements given are estimates)
Method
Preheat your oven to 190°C/375°F.
In a large mixing bowl, mash your 3 bananas well with either a masher or an electric whisk.
Take the 75g unsalted butter and melt in a small bowl in the microwave. Add the butter to the bananas and stir to incorporate.
Add the egg, 50g yoghurt and 2 tsp vanilla extract to the banana bowl and whisk well until the egg is fully mixed in.
Add 100g soft brown sugar and ½ tsp fine sea salt and whisk again.
Finally, sift in 200g self-raising flour and give a final stir with a whisk until you have a smooth batter.
Take your dark chocolate and cut it into roughly 1cm squares. Add the chopped chocolate to the batter and stir.
Add the muffin cases to a muffin tin, then scoop the muffin batter into the cases - I use an ice cream scoop and if you’re making 12 muffins, two scoops per case works out just about right (2.5 scoops if you’re making 9 larger muffins).
Sprinkle ½ tsp soft brown sugar onto the top of each muffin, then place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. You may want to rotate the tray around 20 minutes in to ensure that each muffin is golden brown and crisp.
Allow to cool slightly then enjoy!