Friday, January 29, 2010

Banana Maple Muffins

I was thinking about banana pancakes with maple syrup, which is a little odd, because I'm really not crazy about pancakes. And when I do eat pancakes, I prefer them with just butter and no syrup at all. But still, the flavor profile was stuck in my head.


Sort of like when a song gets stuck in your head, but this was the flavors...bananas in a batter with maple...bananas in a batter with maple...bananas in a batter...and I kept thinking it would be an interesting combination.

Maple probably isn't the first thing you think about when you think of bananas, but it's also not something that would seem too horrible, right? I mean, people put maple syrup on top of almost any kind of pancake, even though I'm not one of them.

Since pancakes were off the menu for me, and since I happened to have a few bananas that were past their prime, I decided to take those flavors and combine them in a muffin.


Please note that this recipe was created and baked at high altitude (about 5000 feet) and they came out perfectly. If you happen to live at sea level and you give them a try, I'd love to know how they came out for you.

Banana Maple Muffins

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 stick butter, melted
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 cup mashed overripe bananas

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare your muffin pans by spraying the cups with baking spray or use paper cupcake liners

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt ad baking soda together. Set aside.

In another bowl, combine the maple syrup, butter, buttermilk, eggs and banana. Whisk to combine.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold until just combined.

Fill the muffin cups about 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until the muffins are lightly browned and spring back when touched.

Here, the resulting muffins rose nicely and didn't overrun the cups, collapse, or do anything else annoying, which sometimes is a problem at high altitude. Not bad for a recipe that I threw together on a whim.

In a perfect world, the maple flavor would have been stronger. What I ended up with, though, was a really good banana muffin. Not too sweet, moist, really nice for breakfast with a cup of coffee or as a snack. Next time I might cut back on the banana to see if I can get the maple to come through a little more.

Makes 18 standard-size muffins.
Yum