Thursday 15 July 2010

Guilt-free banana walnut wholewheat muffins

We were having breakfast one morning last week when Herr Scherrer suddenly asked "Hey hun, can you make me some banana muffins?". I was amused by his request as the only other time he's ever asked me to bake something specific were also banana muffins... of all the many things that come out of my kitchen.... =P

Bananas are easily available all year round from most Hong Kong supermarkets. The problem though is getting bananas that are ripe enough, if not you'll end up having to wait a couple of days before being able to bake those muffins. I was lucky that day though, got my ripe bananas on special offer at HK$4 for 6!

Instead of my usual banana muffin recipe, I decided to make a healthy version this time, using milk instead of butter and replacing white flour with wholewheat flour. I had a bag of walnuts at home and decided to throw that in too, modifying a wholewheat banana nut loaf recipe I had from Carole Clements' The Great Big Baking Book into a healthy wholewheat banana walnut muffin recipe. The guilt-free muffins were moist and nutty, not greasy at all due to the omission of butter. I'll recommend it to anyone who is looking for a healthy treat!



Recipe below makes 5 muffins:

Ingredients
- 130g wholewheat flour
- 75g sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 ripe bananas
- 60g milk
- 1 egg
- 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
- 2/3 cup chopped walnuts
- extra walnuts for sprinkling on top

Method
1. Sift flour, baking powder and ground cinnamon together.
2. Add sugar and salt and mix well, then set aside.
3. Smash bananas with a fork into a puree, leaving some bite-size chunks intact.
4. Combine milk, egg and vanilla and add to smashed banana, mix well.
5. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and stir till just combine, careful not to over mix. Mix in the walnuts towards the end.
6. Spoon batter into lightly greased muffin trays, filling to the top.
7. Sprinkle the extra chopped walnuts on top.
8. Bake in 177 C preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes till a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
9. Transfer to wire rack to cool.



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