Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins (Adapted from Land O’ Lakes)

These banana chocolate chip muffins are sooo good. I woke up early-early to make them the other day, and baked them while still in my pajamas and robe and listening to Stephen Fry read The Goblet of Fire aloud.

The original recipe from Land O’ Lakes is for mini-loaves, which I have made as well and which are great. But we like this recipe as a heading-out-the-door breakfast treat, so muffins just make more sense for us. This week, we misjudged a bunch of bananas and they ripened way too fast for us. Having made these muffins in August, I knew just what to do. I was extra excited because I recently purchased reusable baking cups for myself and was looking for an opportunity to try them out. I got these cups from the Chambers Bay Baking Company on Amazon because they had great reviews and because they come in colors I like — most silicone baking cups I’ve seen are screaming neon, but these are more faded/pastel-esque colors, which is much more my style.

Mashing up overripe bananas is quite fun : I just use a regular fork, and am sure to continue to mash past the initial squish, until the mashed banana is quite moist. The recipe calls for one cup, which in my case took two-and-a-half bananas.

Yes, that’s a brown spot on the banana (gasp). I don’t cut out brown spots, because they don’t make a lick of difference in the end product, so why waste them?

a cup of properly-mashed bananas (see how moist they are?) and also you can see my bathrobe and flannel jammie pants. so comfy…

The recipe, which I have typed out for you below, is simple and quick. Other than mashing the bananas, the most exciting moment for me was spooning batter into my fancy new baking cups (which are nestled into my fancy muffin tin, a wedding gift from dear friends — we have Williams-Sonoma bakeware and it is GOLD and sturdy and washes beautifully and I love it). After I took this photo, I buttered half the cups and left the other half untouched as an ~experiment~ so that I know in the future if they need to be greased or not (results: it does not matter at all, yay!). I filled the cups to juuust under the top.

Adorable, rainbow baking cups in my goldtone muffin tin. So cute aaah.

The smell of the muffins baking is just glorious. If you, like me, have a wonderful mother who made you banana waffles when you were a little girl, the smell makes you feel like you’re seven and playing in the living room with your big brother while your mother makes Saturday breakfast. It’s a very good feeling.

Ingredients:
1 cup mashed banana (2 – 3 ripe/a bit too ripe bananas)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar (see note below)
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups AP flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips (semisweet)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350* and prepare a muffin tin with liners (or grease tin with butter)
Combine butter and sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy (I use a stand mixer for this, but a hand mixer would work as well)
Add eggs and beat until smooth
Add bananas & vanilla and beat until well-combined
Stir in flour, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips (I stirred this by hand to avoid overmixing; it took some muscle. A mixer on low speed would work fine too)
Spoon batter into muffin tin and bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick/butter knife/skewer comes out clean. Let sit at least ten minutes before carefully releasing muffins.
Note : I tilt the pan to roll them gently out, using a knife to lift them and give them a little push. If you did not use muffin liners, you may need to run a butter knife all the way around the edge of the muffin in order to take it out of the tin. 

Note on sugar: The original recipe calls for granulated white sugar, but this time when I made them I didn’t quite have enough so I used half a cup white sugar and a quarter cup brown. I think the brown sugar gave them a slightly more caramel-y flavor. If you prefer that sort of taste, you can try it as well, otherwise regular old sugar works great!