Banana Muffins!

As I was posting my Thai Green Curry recipe, I could smell the rotting bananas on the dining table. Bananas have a strong smell and taste and I wanted to get rid of them somehow. I love bananas. They always bring back one memory for me. Of my paternal grandfather who is no more. From the time I was a baby, he fed me bananas :) We had this huge house in the center of the city. My grandfather would worship the Gods and his mother's photo(!) every morning and serve juice and bananas to all the kids around the area. Some of these kids were street urchins. In fact, my sisters and I were asked to serve juice and hand out bananas to these kids. After this ritual, he'd go on to dress up and leave home for work. When he came back for lunch, irrespective of whether I'd eaten or not, he'd feed me bananas. He'd make sure I ate them. He'd stuff them in my mouth and I loved them! These bananas were generally the over-ripe ones, with the black spots on the bananas :) I still love them that way. I treasure this particular memory of mine with him. I feel proud to date that I ate these almost rotten bananas while the same ritual with my ever-particular sis turned out to be a failure ;) I was proud that I was closer to my Granddad this way. Frankly, I no longer remember him that well. Except for very ripe bananas, chillies in his food (which makes me tolerant to very spicy food), the flowers he used to bring, so all of us could tie it up for God the next day, his generosity with those street kids, him making me write all the words I knew with all the letters in the alphabet. Aaah, memories... So, this banana muffin post really goes to my Granddad. Thank you, Thatha :)

Note: This recipe was adapted from a Food Network recipe. I did not adapt too much though ;) I'm not a great baker and wanted to be careful. I hate measuring stuff, so I usually bake with what I have in hand. It comes out quite well, though not perfect. This time, they were perfect. Patience pays, I've learned :) I added more vanilla essence, omitted the nuts because I did not have any and added more bananas and used a little less oil than recommended.

Of course, it helped that I bought new muffin trays and was dying to try them ;) Also, the batter was a lot for 12 muffins, so I also filled up the new RED (see! I told you about my obsession with colour) ramekin I bought with this batter and popped it into the oven! So what if ramekins are not used for banana cakes/muffins ;) We are all trying to be different no? Also, for the batter that I used in the ramekin, I topped it with a crumbly mixture of this:

3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
3 tbsp butter

Mix these well, make sure its crumbly. Make sure that the butter is soft.

(all this done in a hurry since I suddenly saw this bit from Ina Garten's show on Food Network on TV then :P She did this for a blueberry crumb cake. The impatient me, sigh! I did this in the last minute. Almost put the ramekin in, sighed, washed my hands, came out to the drawing room, saw the show, went back into the kitchen, took out the ramekin, and did this topping. Phew!)

All the impatience created these muffins and I was done with the whole thing including cleaning (and eating while clicking as you can see!) in an hour :) I do not see anything wrong with these results. Neither did A, for whom it was a surprise evening snack. Whaddya think?

P.S. - We bought new bakeware for DIRT CHEAP. So, this blog is going to see a flurry of baked food :D Yay!