Banana bread is all well and good—especially when you have ripe bananas ready to go off—but individual banana muffins can be even better…especially w/ yummy crumbly streusel on top.

❤︎

I’m a big fan of banana bread, as I’ve probably been making it in one form or another for the majority of my life. Sometimes, tho, the idea of it just doesn’t get me excited, so a lot of the time, I end up making banana bread less as a labor of love, and more as something I need to do to avoid waste.

Muffins, however, are another thing entirely. They bake faster, they have a good ratio of soft center to firm exterior, and everybody knows that the miniature version of food is cuter than its regular~sized counterpart. See also: cupcakes, baby penguins, and fun~size candies.

This recipe is based very loosely upon my mom’s recipe, which is pretty good but not fantastic—sorry, Mom!—with changes made based upon both professional baking knowledge, and multiple readings of everything Cook’s Illustrated…those delightfully nerdy, yet rudely pay~walled bastards!

As a couple of notes, I use a neutral oil (sunflower) when making banana bread, rather than butter (melted or otherwise) because it really does make a better textured bread or muffin than butter does. Not to mention the fact that this is a utilization recipe at its heart, so in my opinion, there’s no reason to break the bank by cooking with butter…especially when it’s best saved for slathering on warm muffins before eating.

I also use walnuts in this recipe, which ofc are optional if you don’t go in for nuts, but you can also roast and chop pretty much any other nuts that float yr boat, such as pecans, pistachios, almonds, or even, dare I say, macadamia nuts. But aren’t we trying not to break the bank here??

Finally, I don’t use any cinnamon in the muffin batter, which I know that many people do, because I really want to taste bananas here. There is a smidge of cinnamon in the streusel, as well as a pinch of nutmeg in the batter, which builds on the warm flavor created by using brown sugar…tho I usually eat the entire top of the muffin before eating the rest of it.

What? It’s like two food groups!

Okay! Shall we make banana streusel muffins? Let’s!

Streusel:

• 50 grams brown sugar
• 25 grams old fashioned oats
• 25 grams all-purpose flour
• 25 grams cold butter
• ½ tsp. cinnamon

Banana Muffins:

• 75 grams roasted, coarsely chopped walnuts (optional)
• 175 grams very ripe banana (about two of ’em)
• 25 grams Greek yogurt
• 1 whole egg
• 50 grams vegetable oil
• ½ tsp. vanilla extract
• ½ tsp. almond extract
• 75 grams brown sugar
• 150 grams all-purpose flour
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• ¼ tsp. salt
• a pinch of nutmeg

0. Turn on your oven to 170°C / 350°F, and oil a muffin tin which makes about 12 regular-sized muffins or 8 larger muffins. Alternatively, you can line the tins with paper baking cups, but I prefer the oiled pan route, as I like the slightly crunchy crust that forms when they’re baked naked.

1. As always, let’s make as few dishes as possible! Start with a large bowl, and add all of the streusel ingredients: 50 grams of brown sugar, 25 grams of old fashioned oats, 25 grams of all purpose flour, 25 grams of butter, and ½ tsp. cinnamon.

2. Using your hands, squish the butter and the dry ingredients together until everything is evenly mixed, and you have a crumbly streusel. Tip it into a small bowl (or onto a paper towel!) and set it aside. Don’t worry about cleaning the bowl, as we’ll be using it again.

3. If your 75 grams of coarsely chopped walnuts are not roasted, do that now by spreading them onto a baking sheet, and putting them into the warm oven for 5 to 10 minutes. Be careful not to overbake or burn them! When they’re done, set them aside to cool while you make the muffin batter.

4. Fling about 175 grams of very ripe banana into our previously used large bowl. That’s roughly two regularly sized bananas, but a little bit more or less either way shouldn’t affect the recipe too much. Smush the banana into mush. I like to use a whisk for this, as it works quite well, and I need a whisk in the next step anyway.

5. Whisk the 25 grams of Greek yogurt and 1 whole egg into the mashed banana until it’s well-mixed.

6. Add the 50 grams of vegetable oil along with the ½ tsp. of vanilla extract and the ½ tsp. of almond extract and whisk well again. If you don’t have almond extract, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract instead.

7. Whisk in the 75 grams of brown sugar, too.

8. Now let’s add all of our dry ingredients: 150 grams of all purpose flour, ½ tsp. of baking soda, ¼ tsp. of salt, and a pinch of nutmeg. I like to grate a little bit of fresh nutmeg into the batter, but if you don’t have whole nutmegs and a microplane™ sitting around, ground nutmeg will do nicely. Stir everything together until you don’t see anymore flour. Then stir in your chopped nuts.

Don’t mix too much, or you will develop the gluten in the flour, resulting in muffins which are more chewy than tender. However, mixing the batter well is what creates the muffin tops most people love, so we do want a little action.

<< winks to camera >>

Incidentally, muffins and quick breads (a category which banana bread falls into) aren’t technically supposed to have a very discernible peak on top, as that tends to mean that too much gluten was created in the mixing process…however, all of the banana in this recipe works against the gluten a bit, so you can have the best of both worlds!

9. Divide the batter among the muffin tins, filling them a bit less than ⅔ of the way.

10. Finally, crumble the streusel evenly on the top of the muffins, poke it down just a bit into the batter, and then pop them into the oven to bake. Bake at 170°C for about 20~25 minutes. A skewer inserted into the center of a muffin should come out clean when they’re done…or just gently touch the top of a muffin, and it should feel boingy boingy.

Bam です!

When the muffins are finished, take them out of the oven, and let them cool in their pans for about 5 minutes. Then, remove the muffins from the tins, and let them continue cooling until they’re ready to eat. They taste best when they’re still a bit warm, especially with a little bit of good butter on them, but they’re nice anytime on the day they’re made. If you cover them w/ a clean towel overnight—fight the temptation to wrap them in plastic wrap!—they’re okay the next day, too, especially if you warm them up a bit first.

Thank you for reading, my friends!

I hope you get a chance to try these muffins, and I hope they work out for you! As always, please let me know if you have any questions at all and let me know in the comments section below if you made this recipe. You don’t even need to have an account or sign in or anything to leave a comment, and I enjoy reading what everyone says.

And I especially like likes!