ADVENTURES IN DOMESTICITY: Banana Crunch Muffins Edition

Well, it’s January 3rd, and everyone is slowly getting back to real life after a heady December full of parties, wassail, and poor food choices. There wasn’t much TV to watch over the past week and a half; so I focused on more unhealthy endeavors: eating and drinking. The result is a small backlog of food posts that I will slowly unfurl like a recently defrosted pie shell. First up are Ina Garten’s Banana Crunch Muffins, which I was inspired to make after staring sadly at the two brown bananas resting on my kitchen counter. Back in April, my friend Kate had made a batch, and they were sort of amazing; so why not try the muffins myself? And so while all my Christian friends enjoyed their Christmas morning, I ambled down to the supermarket, fetched some last minute ingredients, and got to work baking. The results after the jump…

Holy sift: I start things out by pouring some flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.

Sift happens.

An inordinate amount of melted butter enters the equation. Don’t worry though: this recipe makes a lot of muffins

After some expert mixing, the dough takes on a crumbly texture.

Next, we have liquids: whole milk, two eggs, and vanilla extract.

The aforementioned brown bananas.

Ripe innards.

Ripe innards mashed up (and poorly lit).

The poorly lit ripe innards enter the mix.

And the mix enters the other mix.

Next, a hearty combination of add-ins: more banana (not mashed), walnuts, granola, and coconut.

A few stirs and soon the batter resembles chunky, beautifully fragrant vomit.

The liners are in position. (Note that the muffin tin on the right came from reader SpecialK).

Batter has been distributed. Now here’s the thing: Ina Garten says that if you use an ice cream scoop, the muffins turn out the same size each time. This is a lie. They do not because people like ME are really bad at creating uniform scoops EVEN WITH A SCOOP.

Also, the recipe says the batter yields eighteen muffins, but look at all I had left over.

Twenty-five minutes later, and we had muffins!

Tra-la-la!

While I stared lovingly at the muffins, I put the rest of the batter into the tins and cooked them off. In the end I wound up with TWENTY-NINE muffins.

Batch #2 yielded this beauty, which certainly had the best muffin top of the batch. That’s jash in the background.

Nom nom nom…

The results? Outrageously good. Like… insane. Insanity. INSANILICIOUS. These muffins were just right: moist on the inside, lightly cripsy on the outside. The flavors were on the money and the texture from the nuts and granola was perfect. Having these bad boys fresh from the oven was an experience unto itself. I did ultimately have to cover them though, and when I tried a muffin several hours later, it had lost its crispiness — but none of its flavor. This recipe is a 100% must-try. Possibly one of the most successful Adventures in Domesticity EVER. Plus, the yield is pretty insane. I still have muffins left nine days later…