Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

My Friday "What We Ate" Posts have not quite happened this summer. Partly because we've been too busy to cook many blogworthy meals and and also, I've given myself a break from a lot of cooking this summer. I'm planning to return to the weekly meal post once school starts up again next month.

But, I did make some delicious banana chocolate chip muffins this week and want to share the recipe with you. The recipe is based on a banana bread recipe from this Cook Illustrated Magazine. As you can see from the date, this issue of the magazine is from 1999. The banana bread recipe was worth saving the magazine all of these years! Yes, I could scan and save the recipe digitally, but I just like pulling the paper version down from my shelf when a banana bread craving strikes.

I didn't have the nuts or yogurt called for in the recipe and wanted to add some chocolate, so I changed up the recipe to make it fit the ingredients we already had. Plus I added brown sugar in place of some of the white sugar. The taste of brown sugar is hard to beat.

Here's a look at my recipe altered from the Cooks Illustrated version:

2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/4 cup buttermilk (or regular milk with a splash of vinegar)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
6 tablespoons of melted and cooled butter
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the flour, sugars, baking soda and salt together in a medium mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, cream together the mashed bananas, buttermilk and eggs. Then slowly mix in the melted butter and vanilla. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined, then mix in chocolate chips.

Line muffin pans with wrappers and fill them 2/3 full with batter. Bake for 12 - 16 minutes. Remove for the oven once the muffin tops are slightly golden and an inserted tooth

This will make about 18 regular sized muffins or 48 mini muffins.

These were gone within 24 hours of baking them. Hope your family loves them as much as we do!