Banana Muffins

Banana Muffins (For 6 jumbo size muffins or 12 medium size muffins)

For the muffins

225g of flour

12g of baking powder

4g salt

7 small ripe bananas (represent about 350g of banana (without skin))

150g of castor sugar

1 large egg

90g of melted margarine

30ml of vanilla essence ('Robbson' brand)

For the muffins' crust topping

20g brown sugar - Large granules (refer photo step 9)

60g flour

25g margarine or butter

2g of Vanilla powder (you can replace by 2g of cardamom or cinnamon powder)

Procedure

Step 1 : In your mixing bowl, add your flour, salt, baking powder and mix well together.

Step 2: Mash your bananas (peeled) using a fork

Step 3 : To your mashed bananas, add your melted margarine, large egg and castor sugar.

Step 4: Mix everything together using your hand whisk !

Step 5: Add your flour/ baking powder/ salt mixture from step 1 to your banana mixture and mix until everything is combined (do not overmix). Then add your vanilla essence, perform a final quick mix and voila, your banana muffin batter is ready !

Tip: It is very important not to overmix any cake batter (unless you are doing a sponge cake ) including muffins firstly to avoid adding too much air into the batter which would cause large cracks to form when baking and secondly to avoid activating/ creating too much gluten which would cause your muffins to have a rubbery texture instead of a soft and crumbly texture !.

Step 6: Use anything that fits your muffin pan (I used my large black pepper grinder ) to prepare the muffin liners using baking paper as below .

Note: You may also use Tulip muffin liners available in most hypermarkets ...

Step 7: Fill your liners (75%) with your banana muffin batter !

Note: The batter is actually quite thick and will rise during baking ...

Step 8 (preparing the muffins' crust topping): In a bowl add your pastry flour and butter (or margarine) and mix until you obtain a uniform mixture as below (right).

Step 9: Add your vanilla powder and brown sugar (large granules type) and perform a final mix to obtain your crust topping mixture !

Step 10: Add some crust topping mixture on top of each and every of your muffins

Step 11: Ready for baking ! Bake your muffins in a preheated oven at 175 degrees Celsius for 25 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean when inserted in the center of any muffin.