These muffins are the result of many attempts at perfecting a banana and chocolate chip recipe. I have experimented with this many times - mainly because we seem to always have 2 or 3 bananas that are just too ripe to eat, but not so over-ripe that they should be put in the compost.
They are always a huge hit in our house, and work particularly well as an after-school snack for the 5-yr-old. I do still occasionally make my grandmother's banana bread when I have some old ripe bananas hanging around, but these muffins have become a firm favourite.
I've not tried them with nuts yet, but I'm sure they would taste good with walnuts or pecan nuts in them.
Recipe
Ingredients
125ml sunflower oil
250g plain flour
2 eggs
100g caster sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 medium ripe bananas
100g dark chocolate chips
Method
Whisk the eggs, maple syrup and oil together
Mash the bananas
Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl together
Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together
Mix in the bananas and chocolate chips
Divide equally between 20 small muffin cases and bake at 200 C for 15-20 mins, until golden brown on top
Recipe Evolution
These are based on this recipe in Nigella Feast. By replacing the butterscotch chips with dark chocolate (as recommended by the good lady herself) they are dairy-free. I reduced the amount of chocolate by a third initially to reduce the propoints, but then the next time I made them added some maple syrup as with less chocolate they were slightly less sweet.
Weightwatchers
These come out as 4 propoints each using the recipe builder on the website. If you make more or fewer muffins from the mixture then adjust the propoints accordingly.
Interaction
I tweeted a picture of these muffins and was tweeted back by @ww_uk asking me to send them my recipe so they would publish it. I duly did so, but didn't really expect to hear anything back. A few days later though, they replied, asking if it was ok for them to share it via social media and when I said yes, they tweeted this:
Fancy something indulgent but low in ProPoints values? Try @bakingdoctor’s chocolate&banana muffin recipe, just 4 PPV! twitter.com/ww_uk/status/2…
— Weight Watchers (@ww_uk) November 1, 2012
I gained 7 new followers as a result, and a great feeling of satisfaction. Goodness only knows how happy I would be if I ever published an article or a book!
