Banana Nut Muffins (perfectly moist)

Banana nut muffins have always been my favorite. Actually anything with bananas will do. Unfortunately most of the banana recipes call for over-ripe bananas. Well, bananas dont stay that long at my place. So this time when I purchased a couple, I wrapped them in plastic and stuffed them in the refrigerator way beyond my reach and the plan worked. Had over ripe bananas ready for these gorgeous muffins.

Walnuts taste the best in these muffins. But I was out of walnuts. Had only cashews and almonds at home. My husband is in love with cashews and I cant eat more than a couple! So I did not add any nuts in the batter, just poked a few in individual muffin cups. Customized banana nut muffins you could say!

Would like to mention one important tip here. To make sure these muffins are really perfectly moist, you cannot overwork the batter. Thats the key. Excessive beating will lead to dry muffins and thats not what we aim to do. So do follow the instructions below. They are quite fail-proof if you stick by them.

Lets get to making some muffins now...

Level: Medium

Serves: Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:

150 gms all purpose flour

1 tsp soda-bi-carbonate

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs, well beaten

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 bananas, mashed

1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

2.5 tblsp milk

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

Step 1 - Sift the flour, soda-bi-carbonate, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl. Keep it aside. Grease your muffin or cake tin with butter spray or butter lightly. Keep aside.

Step 2 - In a mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar till it gets a pale yellow color. Would recommend using an electric whisk here.

Step 3 - Add the beaten eggs, little at a time and beat continuously till they are incorporated well.

Step 4 - Add the vanilla, milk and mashed bananas. You will need to do a taste test here. At this point, you need the batter to be sweeter than what you generally prefer. This is because you will be adding a lot of flour next, which would anyway reduce the sweetness. If the bananas dint turn out to be sweet, you might have to add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of sugar. I had to do that. 

Step 5 - Add the sifted flour. Mix it well with a wooden spoon or a spatula. Do not use the electric whisk here. Lightly mix it till you can no longer see any lose flour in your mixing bowl. Thats it. Do not over mix here.

Step 6 - Spoon or pipe the batter into muffin tins, until they are 3/4th full. Bake in a preheated 350 Deg F. oven for 30 mins or till the tops are golden brown.

Serve these at breakfast, with some honey or maple syrup along with some hot fresh coffee 

or you could warm these up in a microwave and serve it with some cold ice cream for desserts!..Absolutely Delicious!

Tips:

You could use salted butter if you have it at home, to replace the unsalted butter. Just make sure you reduce the proportion of salt you add to half.

Do not panic if the muffins look like they would spill over in the oven. They dont, if you dont fill them more than 3/4th of the way. They will settle down once they are out of the oven cooling. 

Enjoy!