Marlo Approved Banana Nut Muffins

Two bananas on my counter this morning were walking the plank to the trash can. They were by no means rotting, just heavily freckled, soft and super sweet. In many households they would still be considered edible maybe even ideal, but I detest bananas this way. In fact I've been known to gag eating such bananas. My naners need a little green on top. The peel needs to be flawlessly yellow and crisp, and the flesh just a bit sour. Obviously the aforementioned bananas were way past their prime in my mind so it was either the trash or the oven.

I didn't have enough to make my favorite banana bread, so I thought I'd try this recipe for banana muffins. I was pretty happy with the way they turned out. The muffins were very moist, light and fluffy. They weren't too sweet or too heavy, so I didn't feel like a piggy eating one as my second breakfast.

Marlo liked them, too. I packed up the remaining 11 muffins into paper bags to take to Jeff's office and stupidly left the bags on the coffee table while I packed up Marlo's lunch for the day. I'm such an amateur. Of course Marlo pulled the bags off the table, pulled out a muffin and began shoving fistfuls into her mouth. When I finally noticed, I panicked thinking she was going to either choke on the nuts or have an allergic reaction and suffocate. I fished out all the contents of her mouth, found no nuts, then proceeded to laugh and grab my camera.




Banana Nut Muffins
Adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini



1 cup sugar
1/2 cup salted butter, room temperature
1 egg
2 large ripe bananas
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup toasted, chopped pecans
demerara sugar (sugar in the raw)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a standard muffin tin or line cups with paper liners.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffly. Add egg and mix in completely.
3. Mash bananas in separate bowl and mix in milk and cinnamon.
4. Whisk together flour, baking soda and baking powder in separate bowl.
5. Starting and ending with flour mixture, alternate adding flour and bananas to butter and sugar. Only mix until just incorporated.
6. Fold in pecans.
7. Fill muffin cups with batter and sprinkle tops with demerara sugar.
8. Bake 18-20 minutes.