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For me, these chocolate banana bread muffins are perfect and with the hint of cinnamon make them a truly comforting teatime classic. Give them a go!
I was inspired to make these, when a while back I made Nigel Slater’s brown banana cake which was delicious. I tweaked a few things and made these even easier by turning them into muffins, something you can whip up super fast, when you need a friendly little pick me up.
Chocolate Banana bread muffins
Recipe
100g dark chocolate chunks
2 large brown bananas
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
250g self rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarb
50g caster sugar
50g light brown sugar
75g melted butter
2 large eggs
125 ml butter milk (or add 1 tbsp of lemon juice to milk and wait 15 mins)
Method
To make the chocolate banana bread muffins, start by chopping the dark chocolate into chunks and coat with a tbsp of flour so that they don’t all fall to the bottom of the muffins when they bake. Leave to one side to add in later.
Measure out the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and salt and sift into a mixing bowl.
Melt the butter and let it cool for a bit before you add in all the wet ingredients. (If the eggs are too hot they will scramble the eggs, which isn’t the look we’re going for)
In another mixing bowl, mash the brown bananas with the fork. Add in the buttermilk, eggs, sugar, vanilla and melted butter and stir to combine.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold gently to combine. Don’t worry if there are a few lumps in the batter, that’s totally fine, in fact, you don’t want to overmix the batter so it’s better to have a few lumps rather than mix for too long.
Leave a handful of chocolate chunks to one side to add on top of the muffins and then pour in the chocolate and stir to combine.
Pop in the fridge for an hour for the batter to relax. (If you don’t have time you can bake straight away but I find it helps the muffins to rise better if you let the mix chill). You could even make this before you go to bed and let it chill overnight in the fridge and bake them in the morning, that would be fab.
Preheat the oven to 190 celsius for a good 10 mins.
Line a muffin tin with 10 cases and fill the batter right to the top. Add some chocolate chunks to the top of each muffin.
Bake for 20-25 mins until golden brown and cooked all the way through. I use a cake tester to see if the muffins are cooked. If no batter sticks to the tester and the muffin tops spring back when you touch them, they are all cooked and ready to eat.
Transfer the muffins to a cooling rack for a bit before diving in.
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Growing up, millionaires shortbread was my FAVOURITE party food and my Mum would make it for special occasions. What is not to like about this; crumbly and rich shortbread, unctuously thick dulce de leche and chocolate. AMAZING. I was mooching around the kitchen a while ago and had just ordered some novelty Easter egg cutters (you really can buy anything now) and I thought these Easter Egg millionaires shortbread would make a really fun twist on this classic for the celebrations. These cookies make a beautiful showstopper and let’s be frank, any excuse to use mini eggs around Easter and I’m all in.
Let me know what you think.
Ingredients
150g plain flour
100g unsalted butter
50g caster sugar
pinch of salt
397g tin of dulce de leche
100g dark or milk chocolate
50g white chocolate
1 regular sized bag of mini eggs for decoration
Makes approx 6-8 sandwich cookies (you can easily double the recipe if you are cooking for a crowd)
Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C or GM3.
Using a food mixer, combine the butter and sugar together until the mixture is light, pale and fluffy.
Then gradually add in the sifted flour and pinch of salt to the mixture. With the mixer on low, gently mix in the flour until it just begins to clump together. You do not want to overmix the dough here, this will make the shortbread more like a biscuit and you want it to be short and crumbly when it cooks and just melt in the mouth.
Gently flour a worktop and rolling pin and roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick and cut out rounds of dough using an egg shape cutter. Make sure to cut out an even number as they will be sandwiched together at the end.
Transfer all of the cut pieces of dough to a baking tray and place in the fridge for 20-30 minutes to chill down before cooking.
Cook in the middle of the oven for about 15 minutes until pale and lightly golden brown around the edges.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Take half of the shortbread and smooth out approx 1 tsp of dulce de leche to the middle of the cookie. Don’t spread it to the edge of the cookie, the weight of the top cookie will nudge the filling out and you don’t want it to drip over too much.
Put the filled cookies into the fridge for about 15 minutes while you prepare the toppings.
Melt the dark or milk chocolate. The best way to easily temper chocolate is to use the microwave. Finely chop all the chocolate. Add half to a bowl and gently melt in the microwave in short 20-30 second bursts. Check the chocolate each time and when just melted remove and stir in the remaining chocolate. The residual heat from the melted chocolate will melt the remaining and then you will be ready to gently spread the chocolate across the top of each cookie.
Once you have covered all of the cookies, place them back in the fridge while you prepare the white chocolate and mini egg decoration.
Melt the white chocolate in the same way that you did with the dark/milk and when ready pour into a small piping bag to drizzle on your decoration. You can decorate the Easter egg cookies how you like and if you don’t have a piping bag, simply use a spoon to drizzle on patterns and add crushed mini eggs as you like.
These will keep in an airtight tin in the fridge for a few days but are best eaten on the day that they are made.
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