nurse amanda's delicious banana muffins

just in case you needed a little more deliciousness in your life...

banana bread (or muffins)

ingredients:

3-4 bananas (kind of older)

1 c white sugar

1 egg

1/2 c margarine or butter OR if you wanna be healthy you can use applesauce (cinnamon kind)

1 1/2 c all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1tsp baking SODA

1 tbsp cinnamon (optional)

1c chopped walnuts or pecans (optional fanciness)

raisins (optional fiber)

chocolate chips (optional choco fix)

muffin pan with paper thingees or bread loaf pan (9x5) sprayed, then lightly floured

cooking spray

how to make em:

pre-heat oven 325 degrees

in a bowl mix the flour, salt and baking soda together (and cinnamon if you choose to use it)

in another bowl, mash bonanas until they're good an dead!  then mix in sugar, then add egg, and butter.  then mix in the dry ingredients in with the banana mushness stuff.  THEN stir in any extra of the cool, yummy "options" you want.

pour into pan of choice and bake for 1 hour to 1 hr 10 min.  OR until toothpick comes out clean from the center (if you insert it to check the middle)...(note: if you make muffins, then they only need to bake like 45 min)

then let it cool in the pan for like 30 min and then dump it out and let it cool some more THEN cut it up... or eat it warm.

and these are my alterations to the recipe:

i do not ever measure the bananas.  when they start to go bad, i peel them, break them in fourths, and put them in a plastic bag in the freezer.  by the time i pull the bag out to make muffins, i have no clue how many bananas have gone in there.  soooo i just make sure it looks like at least two.  although a few times i've put in a TON of bananas and i probably should have compensated by adding more flour because they ended up coming out sticky (although still delicious).

this past time i only used 1/2 cup sugar and i couldn't even taste a difference.  so i'm going to keep cutting back probably until i notice it.

instead of margarine or butter, i use applesauce.  we're not much of applesauce eaters though and it goes bad after 10 days or two weeks (according to the container) so i buy the little kids, lunch stuffers, single serving ones.  i use regular (not cinnamon) and i get unsweetened and make sure that there is no high fructose corn syrup.  i use a whole thing (i think it's probably right at a half cup and it saves me from dirtying a measuring cup... oh the things you think about when you have no dishwasher!) and it's perfect.

i never add in any of optional things.  no cinnamon, chocolate chips, nuts, nothing and i think they are still super flavorful and sweet and delicious.

when i use muffin liners they're often really tricky to get the muffin out of because the banana is so sticky.  so i prefer to make them right in the muffin pan.  it would probably be really great as banana bread because it's not crumbly at all so it wouldn't be such a mess.  i'll have to try that next time if i remember.

oh, and just a note, since i never measure the bananas, i always come up with an awkward number of muffins... like a dozen plus three or something.  so sometimes i'll make the muffins HUGE and sometimes i'll try to make them smaller.  so when i cook them, i always just set the timer for 30 minutes and then check them from there.