banana | breakfast | chocolate | cupcake related | fruit | miscellany | muffins | recipe | vegan

“These muffins are bananas!”

September 1, 2008

… Get it? Bananas? This entry is about chocolate chip banana muffins…? *ahem* Okay… tough crowd.

When I was going to F.I.T., there was a cafe across the street (27th Street) from there, called Cafe 27, that had the best muffins ever. I was addicted, despite the price of $50.00 a muffin (not really, but it is NYC… I’m not too far off with that). They also made awesome low-fat smoothies… and me and my girl Sami used to ditch class or skip out early and go and get our smoothie and muffin fix. I know my mom and Sami’s will both read that and be less than thrilled, haha, but sorry guys- its true. I always got the chocolate yogurt smoothie, and she got strawberry banana. God, just thinking about it is making me hungry.

Anyway… I’ve always wanted to duplicate the perfection of those muffins. And I ALWAYS seem have bananas in the house that end up getting mushy and brown and thrown away (I hate bananas, by the way… not the flavor, but the texture, so I don’t eat them), so why not? Granted, I don’t have jumbo muffin tins, and those Cafe 27 muffins were pretty large and in charge. But I can try! Here I present to you my version of the (in)famous Cafe 27 yogurt muffins!

BANANA CHOCOLATE CHIP YOGURT MUFFINS

Ingredients:

  • 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg
  • ½ cup vegetable oil
  • ½ cup plain yogurt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
  • ¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350° F. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
  2. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, yogurt and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
  3. Fold in bananas and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.
  4. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

DO NOT OVER-MIX THIS BATTER! The sky will fall down on your head and bats will fly out of your ears if you do! Save the stand mixer for another day and do this by hand.

This recipe will make around 16-18 muffins. I had planned on changing the recipe to make 24 because 18 seemed like a weird amount to me, but I didn’t have as many bananas as I thought.  A half cup of mashed bananas is roughly one banana, so a whole cup of mashed bananas works out to roughly TWO bananas; I learned that when making Elvis Comeback Special Cupcakes last winter. So I ended up with 18 muffins, and I used cupcake liners because I felt it was the right thing to do for some reason. *shrugs*

You can also substitute whole milk or sour cream for the yogurt, I’ve been told. Haven’t tried it, so use it at your own risk. You can make these vegan quite easily too, just by substituting something else for the egg/yogurt.

Basically- they were excellent. Not quite as excellent as the Cafe 27 ones, but really and truly delicious.  They didn’t get as ‘domey’ on the top as I’d have liked, but the taste made up for it. I have another recipe for these using brown sugar and no yogurt that I was going to try, but these were so good I might just forget about the other recipe. Next time however, I think I’ll make a streusel-y top for them, they seemed a bit plain on top. I prefer my muffins room temperature, and not straight out of the oven, so I waited a while to eat them while everyone else indulged and made almost pornographic noises, and it was torture.

As Gwen Stefani would say… “This sh*t is BANANAS… B-A-N-A-N-A-S…” I’m a big fan of Gwen and her Harajuku Lovers and L.A.M.B. lines, and since she uses a lot of bananas in her Harajuku Lovers designs, and in honor of her new son Zuma (yeah, I know), I offer these as a Gwen tribute. No doubt. Haha. Two bad puns in one post? I’m on a roll!

Totally unrelated to muffins or bananas, I’d like to tell everyone that the Target Dollar Spot has cupcake-themed items once again. I got two body lotions and two body washes, one each in ‘Vanilla Sprinkles’ and ‘Creamy Coconut’ but they also had a raspberry one and a mint one, I can’t remember the names. In addition to body lotion and body wash, they had foot scrub, body scrub, glitter lotion and body spray. I haven’t tried them yet but they smell super yummy. Also, they have cupcake themed magnetic shopping list pads and notepads. So everyone go and get your cupcake fix for only a buck! Can’t beat that!

I’d also just like to add that this is my 100th post, and since the 1 year birthday of Cupcake Rehab is coming (September 12th) I think thats pretty awesome.

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100th post! Banana chocolate chip yogurt muffins Target Dollar Spot cupcake stuff

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