Cora's Cottage

One of my favorite cool weather or fall treats is muffins. And one of my favorite muffins is banana or banana nut. These are great to add to a snack, your breakfast, or as a dessert to any meal.

To make these muffins I use one of my favorite banana bread recipes. Therefore this recipe can be used to make banana bread or banana muffins but my preferred method is banana muffins because they’re so great for grab-and-go snacks.

I start by setting out all of the ingredients and the measuring cups I will need and mixing all the dry ingredients together. For this recipe that means, 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 2 cups of flour, and an 1/8 teaspoon of salt. After gently mixing the dry ingredients together, I will add in the wet ingredients including 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of melted butter, 3 over-ripe bananas, and 3 tablespoons of sour cream.

When making these muffins, you can use either fresh or frozen bananas, but if using peeled frozen bananas, it is best to drain off the excess moisture before adding them to your ingredients.

This particular recipe is not terribly picky on the exact amount of sour cream. For this reason I have found it much easier to take my one tablespoon measuring spoon and press three holes into my dry ingredients and then fill those with sour cream before adding the rest of my wet ingredients. I have found this simplest because it is a struggle to get sticky ingredients out of a one tablespoon measuring spoon and the difference of simply squirting the sour cream into those small holes from the measuring spoon is much easier. However, if I do not have the sour cream that I can squeeze out, I simply take a tablespoon from my silverware drawer and do 3 tablespoons of sour cream from the container that way rather than using an actual exact measuring spoon.

Once I have all the ingredients in my bowl, I mix until all the ingredients are combined well. Then, if I am making bread I will pour the ingredients into two well greased loaf pans adding nuts to the top if desired. However if I am making muffins as I usually do, I will scoop about two tablespoons into each muffin liner in the tin. I like to use If You Care muffin tin liners or parchment paper cut to fit and fill them about half full which is equivalent to about two tablespoons of dough.

While I like to add nuts to the top of my muffins, the rest of my family does not enjoy nuts in their banana muffins. For this reason, I will only add nuts to about half or even a little less of the muffins. Adding nuts to the muffins this way rather than mixing them directly into the dough allows me to have both plain banana and banana nut muffins in the same batch so that everyone in my family can enjoy the muffins.

Once I have the muffins into the tins and topped with nuts, I will bake them at 350°F in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I use a traditionally sized muffin tin, so if you are using a smaller or larger muffin tin the baking time will need to be adjusted. I have also learned that some people like their muffins done a little more than others and baking time can be adjust for this as well. For example, if I want a more well done muffin, I will go closer to the 30 minutes, but if I want a moister, doughier muffin I will go closer to the 25 minutes.

After the muffins have baked, I allow them to cool in the muffin tins for 5-10 minutes or until I can remove the muffins in their liners without burning my fingers and place them on a tea towel or cooling rack to cool the rest of the way before packing them away in an airtight container.