All-in yoghurt banana muffins

Last week I tried tweaking my banana loaf by incorporating tea cake with banana bread. It was a sticky disaster that hardly rose, and it got more slimey by the day. (According to BK, that is. I didn't think it was slimey, to me, it was just what fruit did as it matured over time).

Today, I thought I'd try a yoghurt recipe because I had heard so much about the properties of yoghurt in creating an impossibly moist tender crumb. After checking out a few recipes, I settled on this one by Mom's Dinner because it didn't involve too much hard work like hauling out my stand mixer or even the weighing scale. It just used simple American cups. This recipe has been upsized for 16 to 17 muffins (depending on how full you fill each muffin cup), and some little changes eg reduced sugar and swapped half brown sugar and half white sugar

Ingredients

4 bananas, mashed

3 eggs

⅛ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 tbsp (85g) butter, softened at room temp

½ C brown sugar

½ C white sugar

½ C Greek yoghurt

2¼C flour

1½ tsp baking powder

1½ tsp baking soda

¼C raisins

¼C mini or chopped up choc chips (reserve a few wholes ones for deco)

¼C chopped walnuts (reserve a few whole ones for deco)

Method (makes 16 to 17 muffins)

1. Prepare the muffin tin either with home made muffin papers or cupcake liners.

2. In a bowl (I housed everything in my sifter), combine and sift in the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.

3. In another bowl, mash up the banana until no big chunks left. Add the salt.

4. In a third bowl, cream the butter and sugar by hand until pale using a wooden spoon. Add in the yogurt and mix. It will seem to curdle but do your best.

5. (Optional step: helps the ingredients 'suspend' in the batter rather than sinking to the bottom) In a fourth bowl, mix the choc chips, nuts, and raisins with 2 tbsp of flour and toss through.

6. Combine the wet ingredients: add the creamed mixture to the bananas and mix well. Fold through the floured nuts, raisins and choc chips.

7. Sift in the flour in several goes, folding only twice or three times each after each addition. After everything is done, it's ok to have some pockets of dry flour. Try not to overmix otherwise the batter becomes over-worked and you get a tough muffin.

8. Using a ½C ice cream or cookie dough scoop, scoop out into line muffin tins. Fill till about ⅔ full (17 muffins) for the muffins to rise up just till the top edge of the cupcake liner, or all the way if you want a peak overflowing dome (16 muffins).

9. Distribute the whole walnuts and choc chips and gently push them into the top of each muffin.

10. Bake at 175 deg C for 16 to 17 mins until golden brown on top. A skewer should come out dry except for a few crumbs (be careful not to stab a banana or choc chip).

11. Allow to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes then remove to a cooling rack. Best eaten 10 to 15 minutes out of the oven. If eaten when cool, it would be nice to reheated around 10s in the microwave, and even further lashings of butter! 

Espresso chocolate chip muffins

Original recipe from http://prettysimplesweet.com/chocolate-espresso-muffins/

I've adapted a few techniques after trying out this recipe. For some reason, my butter seized up after adding it to the other wet ingredients. I was petrified I would have scrambled eggs but luckily my espresso seemed to 'melt' everything and it didn't taste any worse for it. Also, adding thr brown sugar to the dry didn't seem like a good idea because brown sugar is lumpy. So I'm going to add the sugar to the wet and beat it in instead. Lastly, timing was different to my oven, even though this time. My fan was on so it should have taken less time than what eventuated. So I've tweaked the temperature and timing.

Bought new muffin cases and hooray, they fit the tin perfectly! 

Ingredients (makes 10)

1 ½ cup flour (210g)

½ cup cocoa powder (50g)

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp cinnamon powder

¼ tsp salt

½ cup sugar (100g)

½ cup light brown sugar (100g)

1 large egg at room temp, beaten

¾ cup milk (180ml)

¼ cup espresso (60ml) (note: milk and coffee should make 1 cup volume, so u can use instant coffee too with the appropriate amount of water), slightly cooled

½ cup melted butter (113g), slightly cooled

1 tsp vanilla

½ cup chocolate chips

½ cup chopped nuts of choice (I omitted)

Original recipe has an additional nut, chip and sugar topping which i forgot.

Method

1) Preheat oven to 190 deg C. Prepare the muffin tin eg butter or line with muffin papers.

2) Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt together, You might need to sift at least twice to ensure the cocoa powder is well mixed.

3) In another bowl, whisk the egg, sugars, vanilla until well combined. Drizzle in the butter and incorporate.

4) Add the wet to the dry and mix till just mixed. Lumpy is ok. I prefer to silft in the dry and use a whisk to rotate everything in. 

5) Fold in the chips and nuts.

6) Distribute 2 heaped tbsp to each muffin case. This should bring it to about ⅔ full. Fill empty muffin slots with water for even cooking.

7) Top off with a few chocolate chips on each for a 'professional' look.

8) Bake at 190 deg C for 15 minutes. My oven has hot spots so here, I rotated the tins. Turn down to 180 deg C for another 10 to 15 minutes. Watch carefully because it's dark so u can't tell if it's burnt. A skewer should come out clean.

9) Store in air tight box for up to 2 days outside the fridge.