How to Make Cocoa Banana Muffins with High Crowns and Fluffy Interiors
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You know how you always throw your over-ripened bananas into the freezer to make banana bread? Yeah, well, this time, let’s switch things up and make warm, high-crowned, fluffy, cinnamony, chocolatey cocoa banana muffins.
The base recipe is very similar to my banana bread recipe. I really love how cakey that turns out, but for a muffin, I want to bite into a cloudlike pillow. So, you’ll notice a couple minor changes to the recipe.
There’s also a trick to getting your muffins to overflow the cup and develop that tall, craggy muffin top that we all love. Can you say “Muffin top of the mornin’ to ya?”
So, let’s get going so you can shove an awesome muffin into your face all that much faster!
Making Muffins vs. Making Banana Bread
This is a highly subjective opinion, but I firmly believe that muffins should be fluffy. My favorite banana bread isn’t pillowy so much as it’s moist and cakey. This is great when you’re slicing it up and want it to hold its shape.
However, when you bake muffins, you not only want them to hold their shape, you want them to have a soft crumb that feels like a warm hug with each bite. It’s hard to describe, but instinctively, you know what I mean. Muffins have a specific texture that is very different from their loaf counterparts.
Adjusting a Bread Recipe for Banana Muffins
So, the big differences you’ll see in the recipe between my cocoa banana muffins and my banana bread is that I’ve left out the milk and added in cocoa. This reduces the moisture content but the cocoa magically doesn’t dry the muffins out.
The other thing is that we’re using a slightly hotter oven for a shorter period of time. The hotter oven means that our leavening agents are going to explode, not just gently rise like in my bread recipe. As a result, we’re looking at big growth with fluffy interiors.
The shorter baking time is more specific to the size of the muffins. There’s more surface area exposed to direct heat (either from the conduction of the metal muffin pan or the open air of the oven). That means it’ll take less time to cook through.
Muffin Cups or No Muffin Cups
The last thing I want to address is whether or not you should use muffin liners. They’re colorful, cute, and they make it really easy to get those muffins out of the pan. But, they’re also wasteful.
If you have silicone ones, that’s fine. That’s just more dishes you’ll be washing. As long as you are cool with that, go forth with my blessing.
However, I am a big fan of going without liners. My non-stick muffin pan sprayed down with a little bit of olive oil in my Misto does the trick every time. A fine mist of pressurized oil means I won’t end up with that weird sticky film build up like you get from store-bought sprays.
The muffins come out easily every time, I’m not throwing away a dozen pieces of paper, and I’m not washing a dozen little silicone cups either. It’s just easier to me. And frankly, that’s what we’re all about here: making it easier.
Cool Slightly and Enjoy Warm
You do need to cool your muffins a bit so they release from the pan naturally. This only takes about 5 minutes. So, pull them out of the oven, set them down and go make a pot of coffee or something.
When you come back, they’ll easily come out of the pan, and you can enjoy a warm cocoa banana muffin for breakfast.
Did I mention this recipe is fairly quick? It only takes about 5 minutes to put the batter together and 20 to 25 minutes to bake. That’s just a little more than half an hour to get you to a nice little breakfast. You won’t have even finished an episode of Gilmore Girls in that time.
Comment below if you have questions, concerns, or opinions. And tag me @ellejayathome on Instagram or Twitter if you share pictures from any of my recipes. I love to hear from you!
Cocoa Banana Muffins
Equipment
- 12 cup nonstick muffin pan
- Misto (optional)
Ingredients
- 3 large over-ripe bananas room temperature
- ½ cup unsalted butter softened
- 1 cup pure cane sugar
- 2 large eggs room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1½ cups all purpose flour
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- ½ cup chocolate chips optional
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Spray the cups of your muffin pan with a light coating of oil.
- Cream together the sugar and butter.
- Mash the bananas, and mix in the vanilla, and eggs. Pour this mixture into the creamed mixture and beat to combine.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, chocolate chips, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and fold until fully combined.
- Spoon 1/2 cup of batter into eight muffin cups. You could also spoon 1/3 cup into all 12 for smaller muffins.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before removing muffins from pan and serving warm.
