Cinnamon Banana Muffins

Banana bread is one of the most popular kinds of quick bread – a bread that is leavened with a chemical leavening agent (baking powder/baking soda) rather than a biological one such as yeast.

Bananas first appeared in the United States in the 1870s. They began to appear as ingredients in recipes a while later. Once baking powder became available in the 1930s banana bread recipes started showing up in cookbooks.

Mini cinnamon chocolate chips complement the banana in these simple quick bread muffins. Credit: Adobe Stock

Baking banana bread or muffins is a great way to use up those bananas that are sitting in the fruit bowl turning too brown. And here’s the thing, overripe bananas are the best bananas to use to get a moist texture in bread or muffins. If your bananas are going south and you don’t have time to bake bread, you can put the unpeeled bananas into a large plastic zipper bag and freeze them. Whenever you’re ready to bake, take the frozen bananas out of the freezer and within a few minutes at room temperature you can squeeze the bananas out of the peels and use them in the batter.

Banana bread is one of the first things many of us learn to bake. I’ve been baking banana bread in some form or another since I was a young girl. Over the years I’ve stirred all kinds of add-ins into banana bread or banana muffin batters. Coconut, chocolate chips and walnuts are a few examples. Cinnamon chocolate chips were not in my banana bread baking repertoire until recently. I’m honestly not sure why I decided to stir them into a batch of muffins I was baking but I’m glad I did. The cinnamon complements the banana delightfully.

You can easily double this recipe. I prefer regular size muffin tins but you could also use a mini muffin tin. If you make mini muffins, adjust the baking time slightly so as not to overbake the smaller muffins.

Cinnamon Banana Muffins

Makes 12 regular size muffins

-1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

-1 teaspoon baking powder

-1 teaspoon baking soda

-½ teaspoon salt

-1 teaspoon cinnamon

-¼ teaspoon nutmeg

-3 large ripe bananas (1 -1 ½ cups)

-6 tablespoons butter, melted

-2/3 cup light or dark brown sugar (or coconut sugar)

-1 large egg, room temperature

-1 teaspoon vanilla

-2 tablespoons milk

-1 cup mini cinnamon chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Generously butter a 12-count muffin tin.

Whisk all dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Mash bananas in stand mixer or other large mixing bowl. Beat melted butter, brown sugar, egg, vanilla and milk into mashed bananas. Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix until combined. Fold in chips.

Spoon into muffin tins. Bake for 5 minutes at 425 degrees. Reduce oven to 350 degrees and bake for 15-16 more minutes. Cool 5 minutes in pan then remove muffins to a rack to finish cooling.