Tuesday, January 25, 2011

2 less frozen bananas in my freezer


Quick Banana Coffee Cake Streusel Muffin
The Ugly Binder, clipped from a newspaper

For the streusel topping:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, cut into small pieces and softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

For the muffins:

3/4 cup sour cream
2 bananas
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, cut into small pieces and softened

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 12-cup muffin pan with baking spray, or line it with paper muffin cups.

2. To prepare the streusel, in a food processor, combine the flour, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. Process for 15 seconds, or until well blended and resembles slightly clumpy wet sand. Transfer to a bowl and set aside

3. To prepare the muffins, in the food processor combine the sour cream and bananas. Process until smooth. Add the cinnamon, ginger, salt, vanilla, egg and brown sugar. Process again until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and butter. Pulse only until combined. Add 1/4 of the streusel mixture, pulse the processor 2 to 3 times. I hate the vagueness of that step - tell me exactly how much streusel to add back!

4. Scoop a generous 1/4 cup of batter into each muffin cup. Top each with a heaping spoonful of streusel topping, pressing it lightly into the top of the batter. Bake for 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted at the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes.

Makes 12 muffins.

Nutrition information per muffin (values are rounded to the nearest whole number): 310 calories; 97 calories from fat (31 percent of total calories); 11g fat (7 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 48 mg cholesterol; 49 g carbohydrate; 5 g protein; 1 g fiber; 172 mg sodium.
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This is not one of my old recipes from the Ugly Binder, I actually clipped this from a newspaper recently. I sometimes kill the long 3 1/2 minutes it takes to heat my lunch in the microwave by picking something out of the recycling bin to read and that's where I found this recipe, in a coworker's local newspaper.

I've had a stock of overripe bananas in the freezer forever, planning on making something with them every week, but all the banana recipes I saw seemed blah. This isn't terribly exciting but it was a step up from banana bread or plain banana muffins. I love a muffin with a topping. I'm not a fan of a plain muffin top. I will use this topping on other muffins.

I had some technical trouble. My food processor cut out before I finished. I switched to a mixer but I don't think the butter incorporated properly. I'm not sure. Even though I used foil liners, there was melted butter under each muffin when I took these out of the pan. Weird.

I thought these were very muffin-like, not a cupcake disguised as a muffin. They weren't too sweet or too oily. They looked beautiful - I piled on the topping expecting it to fall off but it stuck beautifully. They rose so nice, and didn't spill over at all. The flavor didn't make my eyes roll back into my head but it was very pleasant.

It's been a while since I made muffins but this might be the start of another muffin kick around here.

6 comments:

#1SAHM said...

this looks delicious! If you're interested, I think I have my Grandma's banana nut bread recipe lying around somewhere (the same grandma that gave you that meatloaf recipe). It's delicious!

Anonymous said...

These muffins look really good. I should try to make something with all my bananas instead of just Banana Bread. The family really loves the banana bread, though. For the life of me, I can't seem to keep bananas from getting too ripe before they get eaten and always have them in the freezer. Sometimes I freeze them whole in their peel and other times I mash them and measure the right amount in a baggie. Do you have any pointers on freezing them? I have to drain them on paper towels because of the water in them. Do you have this situation also?
Sorry this is so long.

Jan

The Cookbook Junkie said...

Well I no longer get any overripe bananas. Dan will go through every banana in the house. The ones I have in the freezer I froze whole in the peel but I have frozen them without the peel. I generally just defrost and mash them although this recipe had me whirl them right with the sour cream which I liked.

Sometimes I don't care for the flavor of the frozen bananas in a recipe. It can be weird. I've never noticed any extra water, just that weird taste every once and while.

The Cookbook Junkie said...

Laura,

I have a go-to banana bread recipe that I love. I wonder if it's the same as your Grandma's. I wish I could still put nuts in mine but we're nut-free here now. Banana bread is one of those things that I really miss nuts in.

#1SAHM said...

well, since you can't do nuts, chocolate chips make a great substitute! = )

Norma said...

Surely, the guy is totally just.