Banana Bread's Sexy Older Sister...

I often cook things with ingredients that I'm not really keen on, perhaps in the hope that one day I might just wake up and magically like them. I'm a bit weird like that.

I don't really like coffee, so what do I make?!

Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. They sounded really nice and fit the criteria of needing to use up a ton of ripe bananas. It's the second recipe I've made from this book, the first being a Root Beer Bundt Cake that I took with me when I went to visit my cousins. I used ginger beer as I thought it was the same thing, though according to Wikipedia... it's not. Nehmoind. The cake was good, really moist but it just tasted like a rich chocolate cake, I thought it would have that extra little something and it didn't, so I was a bit disappointed. I'm quite determined to prove that this book isn't just a pretty one for the coffee table but so far I'm not quite convinced...

Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 1/2 cups mashed, very ripe bananas (about 4 medium bananas)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup whole milk
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp instant espresso powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 12 cup muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, stir together the bananas, sugars, butter, milk and egg.

In another medium bowl, whisk together the flour, instant espresso powder, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the well and stir until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Fill each cup about 3/4 full. Bake in the centre of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean.

Move the muffin pan to a cooling rack, and let cool for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove the muffins from the pan and let them finish cooling on the cooling rack.

Muffins can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

***

I promise you I'm trying really hard to like these more! They're quite a grown up sort of muffin, quite bitter. If I were to make them again I'd either use milk instead of plain chocolate or leave out the salt... I'm not sure. I'd love to know if any coffee lovers make these, I'm a bit of a biased critic!