No, these aren’t the muffins, they’re the builders. Meet James, Andy and Mick
It’s a lucky cook who has willing guinea pigs to experiment on. Usually it’s Him Outdoors but at the moment I have three extra: our builders James and Mick and Andy the roofer, who’ve worked through rain, hail and snow this week and have earned a bit of TLC.
A shout of “tea’s up” will usually bring them scrambling down the scaffolding and they’re always game to sample whatever I’m cooking that day. This time though I blackmailed them into having their photos taken: no picture, no banana muffins.
As muffins go, these are fairly healthy. I resisted the temptation to pipe maple cream cheese frosting all over them (but don’t let me stop you, in fact send me photos) and I reduced the butter and sugar content a fraction but they’re honestly not as joyless as I’m probably making them sound. The men all took some home so unless they were just being polite I must have done something right.
We ate them during a tea break but they’d make a good breakfast or lunchbox filler too.
Banana Breakfast Muffins
Ingredients:
250g self-raising flour
75g vanilla sugar (or normal caster sugar)
1 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1 tspn powdered cinnamon
A grating of nutmeg
2 large, ripe bananas, mashed
50g melted butter
125 ml milk
2 large eggs
Dried banana, to decorate
Maple syrup, to glaze
Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas Mark 7. Grease a 12-hole muffins tin or line it with paper cases.
Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb into a bowl and stir through the sugar, spices and salt.
In another bowl, whisk the mashed bananas with the milk, eggs and butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid ingredients.
Stir until you have a lumpy batter but don’t over-mix or your muffins will be tougher than a weather-beaten Suffolk builder.
Divide the mixture between the muffin tins and top with some pieces of dried banana. Put the kettle on because the chaps will need more tea soon.
Place in the oven (the muffins, not the builders) and immediately reduce the temperature to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5. Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating the tins halfway through. They’re ready when a toothpick poked into them comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and brush the tops with maple syrup while they’re still warm. Allow to cool on a wire rack. Supply, with copious amounts of well-sugared tea, to the workforce.
Heigh ho. At last you’ve posted something I have no intentions of making. I can’t understand why anyone would like the flavour of cooked banana, though I realise this is a minority view. That’s fine. I still have to catch up on so many of your other (wonderful) recipes.
Ah, well, you can’t win ’em all. Remind me not to make banana bread when you visit! 🙂
I like banana muffins, in fact I pimp mine with chocolate. But now you’ve mentioned maple cream cheese frosting (my mouth is watering just typing the words), I’ll put these in the queue: to bake after and especially to be enjoyed with my favourite strength of tea: builder’s brew. N xx
I sooooo wanted to make that frosting but I’m trying to be virtuous. Thin and virtuous. It’s a struggle … 🙁
I know, 12 weeks of whole wheat bread for breakfast (which I love but not all the time…) and not even a smidgen of something sweet or with white flour: I had a spoon of ice cream yesterday, I (nearly) cried. Great thing my husband has taken it upon him to remove all the chocolate pieces from that ice cream. How very thoughtful of him. Thin and virtuous, may the force be with you. N xx
Well, I might manage thinner. Not so sure about the virtue. You, however, are being extremely virtuous. Your reward will come! (And how selfless your husband is. 🙂 )
Thin and virtuous is a struggle indeed, I can taste the frosting on those cupcakes.
Me too, darn it. 🙂
I love the sound of these. Not to mention your builders. Would they work in Sussex? I do a mean chocolate brownie incorporating sour cherries and pecans…..
Haha, thank you, but stop luring my builders away! Sadly James is about to move to Scotland so it might be a bit of a hike for him. Then again, chocolate, pecan and sour cherry brownies might persuade him to relocate. 🙂
There is a neighbour of mine who believes that builders need to be treated as a sub species. Not let into the house, not given tea and certainly not fed muffins. She is a bit of a dork.
At the risk of appearing like an old perve, “Nice buns”.
Thank you. Nothing gives you well-formed buns as much as running up and down scaffolding all day. Our builders/plumbers/electricians all discuss the sort of clients who refuse to give them tea or use the loo: it’s fair to say they probably don’t get top priority in an emergency. 🙂
Lucky builders! Mine kept smashing our mugs so I had to withhold treats 😉 I always buy bananas in the hope of enticing the kids to eat fruit but always end up with over-ripe ones (smallest child will ‘only eat bananas at school’) so lots of them end up cakeified.
Really? I think you were unlucky with your builders. Ours are paragons. Yes, it’s amazing how fast bananas turn. We had so many I experimented with drying my own and I have to say they’re delicious, like banana-y fruit gums. I was planning to use them in recipes but we keep pinching one every time we walk past the jar.