Recipe of the weekend: Banana Muffins

One of my friends posted on facebook that they found a "green light lamp" to teach their two year old when it was ok to wake up mom and dad.  We could have used one of those when The Boy was younger.  These days we get a slow start on a lot of Saturdays.



We were all up fairly early this morning--The Girl had to "work" at a JV volleyball tourney--The Boy and I slept in until about 7, while Mr IM took The Girl to school.  I was drinking coffee and making a grocery list when The Boy appeared, with grand plans to cook breakfast.  He was slightly miffed when I told him that his "ingredient of the week" was the brown bananas on the counter (he wanted more apple cinnamon waffles, using last week's ingredient, the brown apples...)  We visited AllRecipes.com and again found something that would work.  Because I didn't want my phone or computer slimed by our cooking efforts, I copied the outline of the recipe onto a piece of scrap paper, shown here after we spilled on it...So without further ado...Banana Muffins...

1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (we used a little more, there were a lot of brown bananas...)2/3 cup sunflower seed oil (I didn't find any in the pantry, so I used plain old veggie oil.  I did consider using coconut, but in the end went with veggie) 1 egg, beaten

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 C flour

1/2 C sugar (we used a little less)

2T unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powderr 

1/2 tsp salt

1C semisweet chocolate chips (we used white chocolate chips)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
2. In a medium bowl blend the banana, oil, egg and vanilla together.
3. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Stir in the banana mixture until just blended. Fold in the chocolate chips. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin, filling 3/4 full.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.  (We cooked the mini muffins for about 10 minutes and they were perfect)

And finally the finished product--they must have been good, because this is all that is left (original recipe made 24 mini muffins and 9 big muffins)


I intended these for snacks this week,  but it looks like we'll be having cheez-its again.....but these were yummy!