Banana Crunch Muffins - 03/07/08

What do you do with ripe bananas that you don't have time to eat (or at least that you do not want to eat for fear of potassium overload)? You bake with them!


I originally wanted to make banana bread, but I did not have enough bananas. I found this recipe on the Food Network website from Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa). She is the second chef on Food Network known for using a lot of butter, and these muffins are no exception. They have mashed bananas as well as chopped bananas to add extra texture. She recommends granola, nuts and coconut both in and on top of the muffins. I chose to only use the granola and I added some leftover chocolate chips to them. They turned out quite delicious and kept pretty well over time. I displayed them on my cupcake/muffin tree, pictured above. For some reason, they designed the tree to have 13 spots and regular-sized muffin tins make 12 muffins (like this recipe), so I suppose I'll have to make double batches in the future to be able to use the tree properly. I'm sure my friends would not object to that.