Banana Split Muffins

Yesterday was supposed to be my sweet of the month post- but since it was a holiday weekend here in the U.S. I decided to hold my post until today.

But today dear blog readers... is just not my day. I do have a delicious muffin recipe to share with you but it's not the post I intended.

The sweet treat I planned to share was going along great this morning... until it came time for me to mix a custom colored chocolate. Unfortunately I burned the bottom of an entire bag of candy melts. I've never burned candy melts before... so that should have been a sign to pack it in. But no, I forged ahead and used the only other bag I had. Due to an over-estimate on the amount of violet candy dye needed. What was supposed to be a nice dark blue turned into a lovely shade of deep purple. You can see a bit of it here on the edge of a cup in the sink.

Until I can run out to get more candy melts... this project is on hold for today.

So that brings me to banana split muffins. I just stumbled onto this flavor combo for muffins. And it's delicious! I had a little bit of strawberry shortcake topping (not really enough for a batch of shortcake desserts), and some bananas that were too ripe to eat but perfect for baking. I also had some leftover walnuts and chocolate chips hanging around in the fridge that I've been wanting to use up.

Here's the recipe:

3 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup applesauce

1 tablespoon canola oil

1/4 cup honey

1/4 non-fat milk

3 medium sized bananas (mashed)

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

1/3 cup chocolate chips

• 1/2 cup strawberry shortcake topping (recipe below)

Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl and mix together. Add eggs, applesauce, oil honey and milk. Then mix just until ingredients incorporate. Over-mixing will produce a tough muffin. Now add the mashed banana, walnut and chocolate chips. You can add more walnuts or chips to your taste, I just threw in what I had leftover and estimated the amounts for this recipe.

Mix all those ingredients into the batter. Spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray and then fill each cup 3/4 of the way full with batter. Last but not least put a spoonful of strawberry topping over each muffin.

Bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick poked into the center of the muffin comes out clean (about 20 minutes for a large muffin).

They are super yummy muffins but I could also see them making great cupcakes with the addition of a little vanilla frosting and maybe a cherry!

Makes 12 large or 24 regular sized muffins.

I would have photographed more muffins but after I set up the plate I dropped some of them onto the floor. (Which is in desperate need of vacuuming, so into the trash they went.) See it's just not my day!

And if you need a strawberry shortcake topping here's what I do:

Chop fresh strawberries and put them into a bowl. Sprinkle on a spoonful or two of sugar for every half-cup of berries. Stir and let sit in the fridge until the berries have let out their juice and the sugar makes a nice syrup (about 15 minutes). You can adjust the amount of sugar for your taste or depending on how tart the berries are. Taste the sauce and if it's too tart add a bit more sugar.