Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

First of all, who doesn’t like banana muffins? (If you don’t, I’m sorry, and maybe you should give this recipe a try before you continue saying you don’t like them.)

So, my family has their banana bread recipe that EVERYONE uses. You know those kinds of recipes? They start with one person, and then everyone asks for the recipe and we all use the same base recipe every time.

Well, this one started with my mom. She received a copy of The Fanny Farmer Cookbook when she married my dad. Ever since she has made the same exact banana bread recipe all of my life. It was the epitome of banana bread; moist, dense, delicious. So everyone in my family started using this same recipe for banana bread.

And then there’s me… For some reason, whenever I made the recipe for banana bread, my bread came out light (in color and texture), fluffy, and almost like normal white bread or cake… Which is not what anyone thinks of when they think of banana bread.

Don’t get me wrong, my banana bread tasted great, it just wasn’t the normal banana bread. So after a year of listening to my boyfriend “not complain” about how my banana bread was more like banana cake, I decided to adjust my recipe.

The first thing I did was to add more bananas. I’d done this once before when a coworker complained that my banana muffins “didn’t taste like banana.” (I promise I’m not a spiteful person.) Adding more banana definitely helps to get some more moisture into the bread.

Next, I adjusted the sugar content. Normally, the recipe calls for 3/4 cup of plain white sugar. I decided to try it with a mix of white and brown sugar. I used 1/4 cup light brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar. I may switch this up in the future to have a little more brown sugar, or potentially to just use dark brown sugar.

When I was preheating the oven, I remembered that I had a half bag of mini chocolate chips left over from a different recipe that I needed to use. So those got dumped into the batter, because who doesn’t like chocolate? (Honestly, I don’t care for it most of the time, but it paires well with banana.)

The result were beautifully moist and dense mini and regular muffins. Mine are still a lot lighter in color than most other banana bread, but I’ll take it.

Any questions, comments, concerns? Let me know!

Thanks for reading.

-Jo