RECIPE: A muffin recipe you’ll want to make every day
I have a love-hate relationship with muffins.
Growing up, I remember many Saturday mornings opening the Martha White brand of pre-made “wild” blueberry muffin mix, adding an egg and maybe some water or milk, mixing it all together and scooping it into a paper-lined muffin tin. We’d wait for it to bake, knowing full well that they would come out uniform and perfect every time, then slab some butter on one and go about the day.
Although the memory of making muffins from a box is salient, the taste was not. I grew up thinking muffins were just always overly sweet or filled with things that made me feel gross and sluggish.
It wasn’t until I started baking for H&F Bread Co. in 2010 and tasted their Morning Glory muffin that I realized muffins could be different. They didn’t have to be laden with sugar or from a box or topped with overly sweet streusel to be tasty. They could be filled with fruit or even veggies. They could use less sugar. They could be interesting!
This recipe starts with a base mixture you can leave in an airtight container indefinitely. Simply add the wet ingredients when you’re ready to bake.
Make sure to use very ripe bananas, which break down easily and mix in better than yellow bananas in their prime.
Finally, full-fat buttermilk is crucial to getting that nice, soft muffin crumb. If you don’t have buttermilk, heavy cream will also work but will create a denser crumb.
I love these muffins because the add-ins to the wet mixture can be switched. Once you get the hang of the recipe, swap the banana and chocolate with stewed apples and spiced pecans or try zucchini and toasted walnut.
Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins
- For the muffin base:
- 12 ounces (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
- 5.25 ounces (3/4 cup) sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- Pinch ground cinnamon
- Pinch ground ginger
- Pinch ground nutmeg
- 5.25 ounces (scant 3/4 cup) coconut oil, at room temperature
- 2 eggs
- 4 ounces (1/4 cup) buttermilk
- 12 ounces mashed ripe bananas (4 medium-sized bananas)
- 1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
- Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Spray a muffin tin with nonstick baking spray or line it with disposable muffin liners.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Add coconut oil and use your fingertips to work it into flour mix until well incorporated and dough takes on a shaggy look. Set aside.
- In a small mixing bowl, whisk eggs until broken up. Add buttermilk and mashed bananas and fold with a spatula until well combined. There may be some lumps, but mixture should be fairly smooth.
- Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and fold until just combined. Add chocolate and fold another 3 to 5 strokes, until evenly mixed and no dry bits remain.
- Using an ice cream scoop or measuring cup, scoop between 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup batter into muffin tin wells. There will be enough batter to fill 9 to 10 wells.
- Bake muffins 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown and they release from the pan cleanly.
Nutritional information
Per serving: Per muffin, based on 9: 493 calories (percent of calories from fat, 49), 6 grams protein, 60 grams carbohydrates, 3 grams fiber, 28 grams total fat (20 grams saturated), 43 milligrams cholesterol, 406 milligrams sodium.Sarah Dodge is an Atlanta-based bread baker, pastry chef and baking instructor. She is the owner of Bread is Good, which offers bread subscriptions to the general public and wholesale baked goods to local markets and restaurants.
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