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Recipe of the Week: Banana-Chocolate Muffins

I've made this recipe twice already this week; it's a variation on my mom's recipe for banana bread, which she cut out of the newspaper years ago—probably like 20 or 30 years ago. I copied it onto a piece of paper from a World Bank notepad I horked from work back in the mid-90s and pasted it into the recipe book I've been building since 2002. My mom's copy of the recipe is the actual newspaper clipping, titled Blue Ribbon Banana Bread, taped onto a 3x5 lined white index card.

I've been making the recipe as written for years (in college I made it with something called Mummy Food—dates, figs, and cornmeal mixed together and extruded into little nuggets—and called the incredibly delicious result Mummy Muffins), but as I've been eating much less sugar and white flour in recent months, I changed it a bit when I made it this week. I know that adding chocolate makes the muffins more sweet, not less, but you don't need much chocolate to add a lot of flavor, and the chocolate makes the muffins taste amazing when served warm with butter (try splitting them in half and toasting if not serving them hot from the oven).

Banana-Chocolate Muffins

3 ripe bananas
3/4 c. sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/4 c. butter, melted
1 t. baking soda
dash salt
1/3 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325°. Mash banana with a fork (or puree in a food processor, as I do), then stir in remaining ingredients in order listed. Spoon into paper-lined muffin tins or into stand-up muffin cups (you can find these at kitchen supply stores). Bake ~18-22 minutes for regular muffin tins, ~30 minutes for stand-up cups. Cool on wire rack long enough to allow removal of paper cups without burning your fingers, and then split with a serrated knife and serve with lightly salted butter.

I'm realizing now that I don't have a photograph of a finished muffin because we already ate both batches. (Oops!) I'll have to make more as soon as the bananas in the bowl ripen, and update this post with a photo later in the week.