ABC Muffins

So I was going to post a recipe today about ABC Muffins complete with stunning (ha!) pictures of the finished product.

My young Nephew N (2.5yo) helped me cook the muffins yesterday, he really was a most fantastic assistant cook and looked adorable in his apron.

He took 4 muffins home to share with his big brother and my girls had one each for afternoon tea.

While the muffins were out on the bench to cool I sat down at my computer to catch up on some emails.

When I returned camera in hand some 30 minutes later to photograph the muffins this is what I found:

 

So I followed the trail of crumbs into the lounge room to discover:

Thus despite my lack of forensic training I’m fairly certain that the evidence speaks to the muffins having been beamed up into outer space and stolen by hungry muffin eating aliens from Mars.

Without pictures of the finished product onwards we go.

ABC Muffins

3 bananas – mashed up into a puree in the food processor, or with a fork
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
pinch of salt (it really does seem to need just a little salt)
1 egg – lightly whisked.
1/2 cup soy milk (you can use regular milk if there are no dairy problems in your family)
2 Granny Smith Apples – mashed up into very small pieces in the food processor or grated (Granny Smith works best I’ve found but you can use other brands of apples)*
230g of chocolate chip pieces or 1 small bar of dairy free dark chocolate (my personal fav is Green and Blacks Organic Maya Gold) – put the bar into a sturdy plastic bag and smash it into little pieces, very theraputic.
2 cups of wholemeal self raising flour.

Preheat oven to 180C
Put the banana, brown sugar, oil, salt, milk and egg and stir together.
Carefully stir in the apple and chocolate pieces.
Sift the flour into the bowl and stir in.
Remember muffins benefit from as little mixing as possible so only mix it together until all the ingredients are wet. Don’t use a electric mixer because that will overbeat the mixture.
Spoon into greased muffin pans (I use a mix of mini-muffins and larger pans so we get a good variety of sizes for big and little people in the house).
Cook at 180C for about 20 minutes – big muffins / 15 minutes – mini muffins.
Serve hot with the chocolate all melty.

These freeze really really well and reheat in the microwave very nicely. Like my chocolate chip cookies I prefer to eat these muffins when the chocolate is hot and runny.

The Verdict – well I think you can guess from the chocolate smeared faces and the astonishing disappearance of 18 large muffins and 24 mini muffins that these are a hit at my place.

* one thing I really like about this recipe is you can use left over fruit that the children have taken to kinder / playgroup / school and not eaten. My girls wont eat fruit that is bruised / battered/ a little brown around the edges, so this recipe is great for using up apples and bananas that come home cut up but uneaten.

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