I like bananas, but have a tendency to forget they're there and leave them to get very ripe. Banana bread is a great way to use up over-ripe bananas but this time I decided to branch out a little and make banana muffins, using a recipe on the BBC website but giving it my own twist. I scaled the ingredients up to make 15 muffins, instead of the 10 in the original, as well as substituting maple syrup for the sugar to make them less sweet as well as having a subtle maple flavour. Because maple syrup is very liquid I also had to alter the amount of milk in the recipe.
Ingredients:
112.5g unsalted butter
375g self-raising flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
¾ tsp ground cinnamon
¾ tsp ground nutmeg
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
3 large, ripe bananas
2 large or 3 medium eggs
80ml milk
80ml maple syrup
paper cases
2 12-hole muffin trays
Heat the oven to 190C/180C fan/Gas 5. Melt the butter and allow to cool. Mash the bananas well. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large bowl and mix together.
In another bowl beat together the eggs, vanilla extract, melted butter, maple syrup and milk, then add the mashed banana and stir through.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture, stirring roughly with a fork until it is a lumpy paste. Don't over stir, as you want to retain some air in the batter to make the muffins lighter.
Set paper cases into the muffin trays and spoon in the mixture until almost full, then bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the muffin comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the trays and leave to cool on a wire rack. These can be served warm or cold, ideally with a glass of milk.
