Today, February 20, is Louis Riel Day, which is a holiday in Manitoba. If you live in Ontario, Alberta or Saskatchewan, you have today off to celebrate Family Day. Today in Price Edward Island, you get to sleep in as it is Islander Day. Americans are celebrating Presidents Day. For the rest of North America, you can celebrate National Muffin Day (which sadly is not a holiday, and I will get back to that in just a minute).
Growing up, one of the cardinal sins in our household was wasting food. This is probably as much a function of having many children in our family as it is of having parents who grew up in the Great Depression. My Mom was a farmer’s daughter and is still an amazing cook. She is the queen of using leftovers. The leftovers themselves caused more than a few problems when we were children. Many a time we would go into the freezer downstairs to grab a container of ice cream only to open it up and discover that it was not mint chocolate chip, but some mystery item that my mother had frozen to use for a later meal.
With this as a childhood background, it is no wonder that I always feel incredibly guilty when I throw out food. I’m not the only one who has a food waste problem. I read recently that in Toronto alone, a single family household throws out 275 kg of food waste a year. That’s over 600 lbs of food a year which means that 1 in 4 items purchased ends up in (hopefully, at least) the organic bin instead of in meals.
The number one item that seems to goes bad in my house is bananas. Every time I throw out manky overly ripe bananas, I can picture my mother shaking her head at me. Having frozen bananas on more than a few occasions (they are probably still taking up valuable freezer space), I decided this time to redeem myself and whip up a batch of muffins. After all, how else would you celebrate National Muffin Day (Feb. 20) than by making muffins!
Christian was staying with me for the holiday break, so I thought this would a way to use up the bananas as well as stockpile some muffins for him. Since chocolate is great combined with bananas, I decided to make some easy, quick-to-prepare Banana Chocolate Redemption Muffins. Since these muffins take almost no time to prep, you can whip them up in the morning and bake them while you are getting ready for work. You can have a hot muffin to go!
Happy National Muffin Day, and if you live in Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, PEI or the US, enjoy the day off!
Prep time: 10 minutes; Cook time: 20 – 25 minutes; Serves: 12
What you need:
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon (I used the Silk Road Spice Market Sri Lankan True Cinnamon)
- 1 cup yogurt (I used 2% Greek)
- 1 tbsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- 2 tbsp milk (I used 2%)
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
- 2 ripe bananas
What you do:
- Preheat your oven to 400ºF
- Mix sugar, flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon in a large bowl (the “dry stuff”)
- In a smaller bowl, mix yogurt, egg, vanilla, milk and vegetable oil (the “wet stuff”)
- Add the “wet stuff” to the “dry stuff”
- Stir to mix. Don’t over stir it. This is not a runny type of batter
- In the small bowl, mash your ripe bananas
- Stir in the chocolate chips
- Add the banana/chocolate mix to the batter.
- Stir
- Spoon into lined muffin cups
- Bake for 20 – 25 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean
- Let sit about 5 minutes before removing them from the muffin tin
- Serve
Now I’m hungry!
Thanks Larissa! I’ve actually got a batch in the oven right now! Come on over!