Moomy & The Easy-Peasy Banana Muffins

I don’t know about you, my dear readers, but I absolutely hate it when my bunch of bananas turn brown even before I could eat my way through half of it.

It was only just recently, through Pinterest, that I discovered a brilliant tip on how to make those bananas last a wee bit longer.

And Pinterest taught me all these interesting facts about bananas too!

But first, let me share with you the Why: why do bananas turn brown quickly?

I must have fallen asleep in Science class when the teacher was teaching this but apparently, bananas happen to be one of those fruits that emit ethylene.

Ethylene is basically a plant hormone; it is released in the form of gas and it comes off the (stems of) bananas as they ripen (turning from green to yellow). Don’t worry; ethylene is harmless to humans.

It is, however, important to note which fruits emit ethylene as putting bananas together with ethylene-sensitive food like cabbage and sweet potatoes will cause the cabbage leaves to shed and the sweet potatoes to become brown and discolor.

Now back to them bananas and that trick to keep them yellow for longer: split them up!! Don’t keep them together in a bunch but keep them separated by their own individual stem.

If you wish, you can wrap each stem in a piece of cling film but I have kept my bananas without the plastic and it worked just fine.

Amazing, huh, the tricks you can pick up from Pinterest? *winks*

Now that my bananas at home are keeping for much longer, I thought it was ironic that I could hardly wait for them to turn brown just so I could whip up a batch of Banana bread Muffins! LOL!  

The more brown spots a banana has, the more sugar it contains

and thereby, the banana tastes a lot sweeter.

And yes, it's still good enough to eat!

But brown they did (eventually!) and this was what I made:

Preheat the oven to 350degF and prepare a muffin tin with paper cases.

In a big bowl, mash 3 ripe bananas with a fork until its smooth. Then pour a third of a cup of melted butter into the mixture and stir until it has nicely come together.

First, you mash 'em …

… and then you add melted butter to the mashed bananas!

Then you add these: 1 teaspoon of baking soda, a pinch of salt, ¾ cup of sugar, 1 beaten egg and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence. Stir everything together to combine.

 Because the bananas are already sweet, I only added 3/4 of a cup of sugar to the batter. 

Next, carefully fold in 1 and a half cups of all purpose flour.

All you really need is arm power to whisk it all up!

Once your batter is ready, spoon them into your paper cases. (Alternatively, you can use a loaf tin; just be sure to grease it generously.)

For some added crunch, I sprinkled some light brown sugar on top of each muffin.

 I love it when my muffin-tops are crunchy! :D

Pop your muffin pan into the oven and let it bake for about 1 hour. When tested in the center with a skewer, the skewer should come out clean. If not, let it continue to bake for another 5 to 10 minutes.

Once its ready, remove from oven and cool it completely on a rack.

 I had my mug of tea ready even before the muffins were out of the oven! *winks*

 And that is, of course, lil Aidan's finger trying to nudge

the muffin closer to me so that I could feed it to him ...

 Its nice and moist inside too and you can always warm it up

for breakfast the next day. If there are any left, that is ...

Now ain’t that an easy peasy recipe? And I didn’t even use my electric hand whisk! 

So if you have any brown bananas lying around the kitchen, make these quick lil muffins for tea! :D:D:D Until next time, stay warm and keep dry, y'all! :D:D:D