When I was in high school we had access to vending machines packed full of nutritious and good-for-you snacks like Chili Cheese Fritos, Sour Cream & Cheddar Ruffles, Snickers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Otis Spunkmeyer Chocolate Chocolate Chip muffins. I think I ate one of those muffins at least three times a week for breakfast all through high school. It’s the breakfast of champions, I tell you.
Fast forward more years than I’m happy to admit and not a lot has changed, except instead of buying those rich and chocolate-y muffins studded with chocolate chips I just make my own.
Although, because I’m a grown-up, I’ve made them a little healthier by adding banana because it makes me feel a little better about life and, as we all know, if it’s got bananas it’s totally appropriate for breakfast. Yep, that’s the truth.
In about 40 minutes you can have a dozen of these double chocolate banana muffins ready to go. Fresh from the oven each bite of these decadent muffins reveals little pockets of melt-y milk chocolate chips – a mighty fine way to start the day, if you ask me. They’re perfect for a weekend brunch spread, or a take-to-work treat for the break room, or as a special surprise for a neighbor or friend.
Or not.
You can totally keep them all to yourself – I won’t tell.
- 3 ripe bananas, mashed
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 tablespoon strong-brewed coffee, at room temperature (see note)
- 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, divided
- 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup milk chocolate chips
- 1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a standard sized muffin tin by spraying with cooking spray.
- In a large bowl stir together the mashed bananas, butter, egg, sugar, vanilla, and coffee until well combined.
- In a medium bowl, sift together 1 1/2 cups of flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and stir until just combined. In the same bowl used for the dry ingredients, toss the chocolate chips with the remaining 1/4 cup of flour. Gently fold the chocolate chips into the batter.
- Divide muffin batter evenly across the muffin cups ( fill each about 1/2 way). Top each muffin with the chopped walnuts and chocolate chips.
- Bake the muffins at 350 degrees about 30 minutes. Starting checking on them at 20 minutes and remove from the oven once they pass the toothpick test.
- Let them cool in the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
These muffins look a billion times better than the kind in the vending machines, girlfriend! LOVE that you added bananas to the batter! These chocolatey beauties look to die for! Cheers and thanks for sharing the YUM!! ; )
Thanks, Cheyanne!