I bought some bananas last weekend and was waiting for it to overripe to make some banana muffins. Now that Lent is over, I can finally stuff my face with chocolate. So I decided to make chocolate banana muffins today. As much as I love my Kitchen Aid, but I  find it really heavy and troublesome to use. Thank goodness, most banana muffin recipes uses the mixing method which makes my life so much easier.

Baking has always been a therapy for me. I like how it is systematic and that I get to add my favourite ingredients into my own baking. Also, I enjoy watching television while baking. With the Commonwealth Games ongoing at the moment, I basically spent my whole Sunday baking and watching the different events happening – my kind of Sunday!

Nutrition per muffin (one batch makes 12)

Ingredients for the muffin

1. 3 ripe bananas
2. 125ml olive oil
3. 2 large eggs
4. 100g brown sugar
5. 225g plain flour
6. 40g cocoa powder
7. 1 tsp bicarbonate soda

Ingredients for the chocolate topping

1. 150g dark chocolate (I used 70% lindt chocolate)
2. 30g white chocolate

Directions

Preparation time: 15min
Baking time: 20min or when the muffins turn golden brown

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and prepare a 12 case muffin
2. Mash the bananas by hand
3. Mix the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and bicarbonate soda together in a large mixing bowl. Use your fingers to ensure that there are no lumps of flour or sugar in the mixture.
4. Beat the eggs and oil together
5. Tip the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and banana. Mix together with a spoon until lump-free
6. Spoon the mixture into the muffin case
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 15–20 minutes, by which time the muffins should be dark, rounded and peeking proudly out of their cases. Allow to cool slightly in their tin before removing to a wire rack.
8. Leave the muffins out to cool
9. After the muffins have cooled down completely, melt 150g of dark chocolate. I usually do it in bursts of 30sec using the microwave
10. In a separate bowl, melt the white chocolate
11. Prepare a piping bag and place the melted white chocolate into the piping bag
12. Dip the tops of the muffins into the melted dark chocolate and pipe the white chocolate over it
13. Using a small skewer, drag through the white chocolate to create patterns

There you have it!