I have my own tried and true recipes but I felt like finding another recipe and tweaking it because that's just what I like to do. I love kitchen science. That and everyone has to have a few good muffin recipes lying around somewhere! So after searching and searching, I found a recipe with positive feedback that somehow made me want to experiment with.
It's Giada De Laurentiis' recipe for Banana Muffins. Also comes with a frosting recipe but I like to leave frosting for cupcakes. Copy and Paste the links/Recipe Below:
http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2008/01/09/banana-muffins-2/ or http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/banana-muffins-with-mascarpone-cream-frosting-recipe2/index.html
Banana Muffins
(Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis)
Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 ripe bananas, peeled and coarsely mashed
Directions:
Line 18 muffin cups with paper liners. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder in a medium bowl to blend. Beat the sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl to blend. Stir in the banana. Add the dry ingredients and stir just until blended.
Divide the batter among the prepared muffin cups. Bake the muffins on the middle rack until the tops are golden brown and a tester inserted into the center comes out with no crumbs attached, about 25 minutes. Transfer the muffins to a rack and cool slightly. The muffins may be eaten warm or cooled completely and frosted.
Only three things here in the recipe made me want to change it: (1) The oil content, (2)the sugar, and (3) the flavor. I felt the oil is too much for a muffin --no matter how big the batter ends up being and the sugar was also just too high for me. Why not let the fruit add to the sweetness of the muffin? And I love utilizing spices in my baking. I'm no plain Jane. :)
♥ 2 cups sugar = 1 1/2 cups = 1 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar
I love the different flavor brown sugar gives on top of its sweetness. I prefer to add more brown sugar than white in most of my baking recipes. The muffins were just fine the way they were. Not too sweet but not under sweet. The recipe, although it says it makes 18 muffins, I got 24 out of it so I didn't want to chance taking out too much sugar.
♥ 1 cup vegetable oil = 1/2 vegetable oil and 1/2 cup milk
Perfect lowering of oil and love the addition of milk. Could have eliminated the oil and used applesauce but I'm not completely a fan of that. That and I would have had to wait awhile to bake if I ended up making the applesauce! I processed two soft persimmons just to add to the moistness of the muffin (mentioned below).
♥ 1 tsp salt = 1 tsp sea salt
Just for the heck of it. I only use sea salt now. Salt is not really good for you but sea salt is better than that iodized salt if you're going to use it.
♥ 4 ripe bananas = 2 bananas mashed and 2 bananas, chunky
Because I like muffins with chunky fruit.
Now you can leave the recipe as is and go ahead and bake for yummy and moist banana muffins or you can continue on and do more.
♥ 4 persimmons = 2 firm persimmons peeled and diced. 2 soft persimmons, peeled and processed in the food processor
I like persimmon and banana together. There are other good combinations of course, but today I used persimmon. I processed the two persimmons because I lowered the amount of oil and sugar so I wanted to make sure I made up for that.
♥ Chopped walnuts. Yes please!
♥ And I added: Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Allspice, and Ginger. Got the hint of them but not overpowering at all.
Perfectly flavored and moist muffins. Fruity. Spiced up. Can't get better than that. Giada had a good recipe but I just made it a tad bit healthier and got a little creative.
Now to go outside and enjoy this beautiful rain...
