Chocolate Banana Muffins

Two muffin recipes in one week! That's a new one for me, i usually do not make muffins at all. This one i found in a cookbook put together by the staff of one of my local grocery stores. I usually won't spend ten dollars on a cookbook of this nature, but all the money goes to some good causes: Hospice, Joshua Group, and one of the local hospitals, to name a few.

Chocolate Banana Muffins


2 cups flour.
2/3 cups sugar.
1/3 cup cocoa.
2 tsp baking powder.
1 tsp salt.
1 egg.
1 cup milk.
1/3 cup vegetable oil.
1 cup mashed ripe banana.
 tsp vanilla.

In large bowl, mix flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt. In medium bowl, mix egg, milk, flour, oil, banana and vanilla. Add all at once to dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened.
Divide batter evenly into 12 large paper lined muffin cups. Bake in preheated 425 F oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

These turned out delicious, but the next time i will have to pull the bananas out of the freezer earlier. They were still quite frozen and didn't incorporate very well, even after microwaving them almost 3 minutes; so i have chunks of banana throughout the muffins that make it difficult to remove the paper wrappers. Otherwise, this is a perfect muffin.

I love this, i can put all the ingredients into a large measuring cup and they separate. This was a science experiment we did in Junior High, i thought it was cool then and still do 15 years later. This is the milk, oil and egg.

I filled the muffin tin up to almost full, and got a dozen muffins. I want muffins that have that lovely mushroom top that you get in bakeries. Even though they were very full, they did not expand out but rather up. I will have to use my muffin top pan as well, and glue them together, i guess!

So it's finally Friday, and i really do not have anything to do this weekend. There are two hockey games, but i haven't the spare funds to go. The price of gas has gone up again, to 1.30 a Litre (about 4.90 a gallon), so i can't afford to fill up and go home. And it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow; i might go out and see if i can get some Spring photographs at the park, but otherwise i am stuck home all weekend. It is not all bad, my house needs some good Spring cleaning and i feel like making bread.

Have a Happy Friday!!