Healthier Version of Chocolate Banana Marble Muffin

Healthier Version of Chocolate Banana Marble Muffin

   October 11, 2018       Lyn Alina

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I have a confession. 

I don't like to eat bananas. I mean eating the bananas alone. I really cannot tolerate the strong banana taste in my mouth. But my whole family is a big fan of bananas. They can even finish bunches of bananas alone.  Last time, even my mum planted a lot of banana trees around our house! 

But for me, I prefer to eat bananas when they are mixed with other ingredients like banana cake, chocolate banana ice cream and smoothie and banana fritter or "pisang goreng", one of the favorite snack for Malaysian.  I also like to eat young bananas, which are still unripe cook with coconut milk, a Malay dish known as "Masak Lemak Pisang Muda." It's very delicious dish when eaten with white rice and fried salted fish. Yummy!

When I am married, I need to like to eat bananas and always have the stock of bananas at our home since my hubby is a fan of bananas. You know it's a husband-and -wife-to-share-common-interests things...that is the need for a couple to like what their partner like. That sort of things.

However...the problem with bananas are, when we buy ripe bananas, they have pretty fast shelf life and they won't taste good anymore to eat them alone when they already over ripe with soggy texture and brownish in color. 

So, I always turned them into baked goods or desserts before they are completely rotten because I don't like to simply throw away foods.

Today, I want to share with you one of my creation using bananas as the primary ingredients.

While this chocolate banana muffin is so delicious, I can say it is a healthier version of banana muffin,because I am using whole meal flour, adding chia seeds and I'm using honey instead of white sugar. So it is more fulfilling on-the-go breakfast and snack, and my favorite part is, it is so easy to prepare!

For this recipe, I divide the batter into two, one I left it plain and I added coco powder to the other one. Actually I wanted my muffin to have marble or zebra-like pattern, but you can always omit this step and instead make your muffin only one colored.

Lets look at the recipe.

Healthier Chocolate Banana Marble Muffin:

All you need to have are:

3 large ripe bananas - I used Cavendish banana (meshed)

1 large egg - stir lightly with fork

1/4 cup of vegetable oils

1/4 cup fresh milk or evaporated milk

1/2 teaspoon of salt

4 tablespoons of pure honey - you can use brown sugar to substitute honey

Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir using a spatula until all the ingredients are well -combined. 

Set aside.

Meanwhile, you can prepare the dry ingredients.

2 1/2 cups of whole meal flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 cup of chocolate chips

2 tablespoons of chia seeds

Mix all the dry ingredients and add them into the wet ingredients little by little. Using a folding technique, mix well until all the ingredients are incorporated. 

Cautious not to over mix! You are not making a cupcakes. To make muffin, it is enough to stir batter just until the ingredients are all well-combined.

As I said earlier, I divide the batter into 2 portions. The other one I added coco powder. Divide the batter equally and place the batter into 2 separate bowls.

So, for the chocolate batter, you can add in:

2 tablespoons of coco powder.

Sift the coco powder to break the lumps and add the coco powder into the second batter. 

Grease the muffin tray with vegetable oil or butter. You can also use paper cup.

Now, to make the marble pattern, use one tablespoon for each batter to create the layers of batter in the muffin tray's holes. Begin from the middle of each muffin hole, pour a spoonful of plain batter then pour another spoonful of chocolate batter on top of the plain batter. Repeat this steps until the batter fill 3/4 of the muffin hole.

Additionally, if you prefer to indulge muffin with melted chocolate filling inside, you can add chocolate chunks in the middle of the batter when you do the marble layering for each muffin hole.

Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes at 170'C. (The baking length varies depending on your oven).

Serve warm! 

You can store the muffins in fridge for few days. Keep the leftovers stored in an air-tight container and re-heat in microwave to serve.

NOTE#

If you don't like to spend your time making the marble pattern and instead want them to be wholly chocolate, you can skip this step and add in 4 instead of 2 tablespoons of coco powder into the batter.  Alternately, if you are just fine with plain batter, you can omit coco powder.

All I can say is these muffins are heaven and honestly mind blowing!

They are delicious and eye catchy for their marble pattern. What's more, these muffin are stuffed with melted rich dark chocolate! Trust me, even your kids will like these muffins and definitely will ask you to do more. 

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