Surprise! You just ate vegetables. -- banana muffins... sort of

May 17th, 2012

(Warning. This is a lengthy post. I promise I tried to be as entertaining as possible, but I cannot guarantee anything. But if it helps, this is a rare glimpse into the inner workings of my mind.)

On my 17th birthday, my oldest brother took me out to go shopping before the family dinner at home. He said that I could pick out whatever I wanted and he would pay for it. Sweet deal, right? Anyway, after I finally decided on what I wanted and my brother paid for it, we passed by a pet store on the way back to his car. I pleaded with my brother asking if we go inside and pet the puppies. Without even checking his watch to make sure we wouldn't be late, he said, "Yeah, that sounds fun."

What was I thinking. I should have been suspicious. He is very impatient and never lets me near the puppies because I am indecisive and a browser which means I could easily spend an hour in a store and only buy two things. And yet he had no problem of going into the pet store even though he was getting hungry. But I didn't care. The puppies and guinea pigs called for my attention and I threw myself into the store.

Unbeknownst to me, my brother was actually stalling our homecoming because our family was throwing me a surprise birthday party and was waiting for all of my friends to get to our house. To summarize, we finally went home, I was completely shocked, started bawling (from... joy?) and running away from my friends, and was chased down and tackled to the ground. Needless to say, surprises are not exactly my most favorite thing in the world. However, that does not necessarily mean that I won't spring them on other people. In fact, I LOVE giving surprises!

I tend to leave notes or little gifts because I have this small hope that God will reveal my surprises when that person really needs to find my silly gesture. Chances are, if you've ever received a gift from me that has a compartment or is layered in some way, you'll find a message. I personally prefer these covert expressions of love. Much like lighting a candle in church or silently saying a prayer in your heart rather than on your lips, the quiet ways can sometimes mean so much more. It's not the theatrics or the way I display my affections that matter to me, but the fact that I love you.

I introduced these muffins as just banana muffins, but surprise! they're so much more than that. The muffins sound like they were randomly thrown together from an assortment of ingredients I had in my fridge. That's because they were. As I learned from my eighth grade ancient world history teacher, "Necessity is the mother of all invention." That statement pretty much sums up how the banana and zucchini yogurt muffins with a hint of cocoa came to be.

This is what happened and the logic behind all of it:
It was a weeknight at the Newman Center and we were hosting a couple from Blessed Sacrament to give a talk about Natural Family Planning -- it's the Catholic Church's current approved method of birth control. By the way, if you encounter people who try to nullify the knowledge of the Church by making the argument that the rhythm method is ineffective, then they're right in that the rhythm method doesn't work very well but they are also wholly out of date. Technology is advancing, people are getting smarter, and the way that we express our faith is constantly changing. It's not like we've been sitting around for two thousand years twiddling our thumbs.

Anyway, I wanted to represent the center by being the gracious hostess that I am and bake something homemade and delicious for everyone attending the talk. But what to make? My roommates' bananas were ripe and they're too picky to eat overripe bananas -- I decided that I could prevent a fruit fly epidemic and save all of us by making muffins! I had quite a bit of yogurt left that I was already bored of eating -- yogurt would add a nice texture and help make them fluffy while adding moisture. My zucchini were going bad because my mother sent way too many in a failed attempt to "force me" to eat my vegetables -- well, I'm actually missing an egg so I guess I could throw that in too as a refreshing substitute... I threw in the cocoa powder for the heck of it and also because I didn't think that the kitchen sink would be a great addition.

Some notes about the recipe: 
Cocoa powder acts a lot like flour. If you want to add a little bit of cocoa powder to a recipe that originally didn't have it, be sure to subtract the same amount of flour from your recipe or else your finished product will be too dry. Be mindful though that cocoa powder is still not flour so don't be too enthusiastic with how much you end up using.

Some ways that I have seen cocoa powder used in a recipe is either introducing it with the dry ingredients or mixing it with hot water until it becomes a sort of spackle and then incorporating it into a recipe towards the end. If I mix the cocoa powder with the dry ingredients then I feel obligated to sift it together but then I have to wash my sifter or sieve which is such a pain and I just... I hate the spackle method because I have a tendency to overmix since it takes a while to break up the dense paste. Instead, I made a compromise -- I dissolved unsweetened cocoa powder in the melted butter. Butter has a fairly high water content so it's like the spackle method but since I only wanted a hint, it was still easy to work with.

Sour cream is fine in place of the yogurt -- I use the two interchangeably because I really only need something acidic to react with baking soda. Baking soda is a basic ingredient (basic as in the pH is higher than 7) and so it needs an acid in order to be neutralized in the batter and as a result, add volume to the muffins from the gases produced. With that in mind, this is also why I don't add yogurt until right before I divide the batter into muffin tins. If the yogurt is added too soon, the gases escape from the batter and the muffins fall flat. Vanilla flavored is fine if you don't eat plain yogurt or sour cream too if you don't even eat yogurt. For the sake of your sanity, take the yogurt out of the fridge before you start assembling the ingredients so that when you finally fold it in, it won't fight with the rest of your batter which should be at room temperature as well.

One last note, I have been baking for a small community of college students for the past two years, so please bear with me as this recipe will yield enough to feed well, you know.

Annnd (insert fanfare here, please), my first draft of the recipe!

Banana and Zucchini Yogurt Muffins (with a hint of cocoa)
Yield: about 2 dozen muffins... maybe three? I honestly don't remember anymore.

Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter
(optional: 2-4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, to taste)
1 1/2 cups white sugar (if you're like me or a particular brown sugar fiend I know: 1 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup white sugar should be fine as well as mighty delicious, to say the least)
3 eggs
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour (minus 2-4 tbsp, depending on how much cocoa powder you decided to melt with the butter)
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp [I think...] baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup of plain yogurt
3 ripe medium bananas, mashed
1 medium zucchini, peeled and grated

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).  Prepare your muffin/cupcake tins however you prefer -- I like to line my tins with paper liners. You can grease your pans with butter and coat it with flour (be sure to dump out the excess) or you can use a nonstick baking spray, but I know what my dear old tins have been through and that lining them with paper will provide the cleanest flavor and quickest release. 
2. Melt the unsalted butter in a small saucepan over the stove. I like to let the butter gently cook until it reaches a deep golden brown -- browning the butter really brings out a depth of flavor that you can't get otherwise. Once the butter has melted, add the unsweetened cocoa powder and stir until it is dissolved into the butter. Turn off the stove and set the melted butter aside to cool. 
3. In a medium bowl, measure out the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and whisk (or 'fork' if you're like me and don't care about being fancy) to combine the dry ingredients. Be careful to break up any lumps in the baking soda and baking powder while whisking. Eating dry clumps of baking soda or powder in a finished muffin is... metallic and kind of salty. Not delicious. 
4. In a large bowl, measure out the sugar and stir in the cooled melted butter until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring until just incorporated. Add vanilla, stir. 
5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients -- I like to incorporate the flour mixture in two to three batches to avoid creating little flour pockets in the batter. Gently stir after each addition just until a small streak of white remains each time.
6. Fold in the yogurt until just incorporated. Fold in the bananas and zucchini. 
7. Fill the muffin tins about 2/3 full (or however full you want it to be, really. You like that muffin top that goes over the edges? Go ahead and fill it up some more!) and bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes (....? I actually do not remember.... it might be 18 minutes. I meant to write down this recipe but come on, it's me. I'm a scatterbrain) or until a toothpick inserted the center of a muffin comes out clean.
8. Cool the muffins in the tins for 5 minutes (or until it's cool enough for you to handle) and remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Unless you like soggy bottoms, then you can just leave it in the muffin tins.

If you don't have zucchini or you don't like it for some strange reason (seriously, why not?), just use another banana. Or maybe an egg. I just think that the refreshing zucchini and the rich chocolate are a fantastic pairing especially with the nuttiness of the butter holding it all together. Also, many apologies for the tedious and hopefully not too confusing directions. I really need to clean up this recipe....

Also, as a thank you for making it through this entire post, here's a picture of my ugly pug. She's real special.

Good luck (with a hint of cocoa)!

hd

P.S. Not to worry about how uncertain the instructions are. I just bought way too many bananas which is going to force me to make these again! Stay tuned, people.