Banana Muffin

​When shopping – particularly if I’m hungry, savouring the idea of preparing delicious dishes, I often buy too much fresh produce.  Then I find myself stuck with an excess of wonderful ingredients and a lack of desire to cook. I have many reasons to cook or create a recipe; hunger, obviously, is the principle one, or simply “emptiness”, as my father would claim; the second is the glorious sight and smell of fresh vegetables, fruit and cheese; other reasons include the temptation of a good  recipe (or food photograph), or the memory of a dish or a flavour, and the desire to recreate it: but the one that most frequently motivates me to action is the determination to use up food stuff before it goes off, (oh, the the horror of wasting food which costs so much labour to produce!).

This January has been particularly challenging in our house as I’ve been off food since Christmas due to a long-lasting dose of the flu.  So all the wonderful food I had bought in the week before Christmas was sitting ignored.  The sight of bananas turning browner in a bowl finally drove me to rouse myself and make banana muffins – I just could not throw them out. As an added bonus I was able to use stale natural yogurt – (sour smelling but no mould).

This is an easy recipe and these muffins are a great snack, delicious for breakfast or for putting in lunch boxes and have the added bonus of being quite light on sugar. They also keep well for 3 or 4 days and, if anything, taste better a day or two after baking.

Ingredients

• 250 grams of self-raising flour
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• ½ tsp of bread soda (also known as baking soda)
• 120 grams of caster sugar
• 2 ripe bananas – mashed
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence
• 2 eggs beaten
• 125 ml of stale yogurt OR sour milk/ butter milk
• 75 grams of melted butter
• 60 grams of sultanas

Method

1. Set the oven to 190 C degrees
2. Line muffin tin with the muffin paper cups
3. Weigh and sift together the flour and raising agents
4. Add the sugar to the dry ingredients
5. Add the sultanas to the flour mix
6. In a separate bowl, mix the yogurt, bananas, beaten eggs, vanilla and pour in the melted butter
7. Pour the well mixed liquid into the dry ingredients and mix well – (no need to beat as the combination of the raising agent and the sour yogurt/milk will do all the raising you need)
8. Put a large tablespoon of the wet mix into each of the muffin cases and put in the oven.
9. Cook for 20 – 25 minutes until brown and cooked through.
10. Remove from oven and put muffins onto wire tray to cool.

 
ENJOY!
 
Katie Verling