I ran across this recipe while searching for breakfast ideas and decided to whip up a batch to have on hand throughout the week. The author warns that these are rich, decadent, "almost a cupcake" muffins, not to be had every day. And they do have a large amount of sugar and oil in them, so I agree that they probably shouldn't be a regular breakfast offering. That said, despite the rich ingredient list, I didn't find that they tasted as rich and decadent as I was hoping for.

To my palate, these don't taste like the dark, sweet, fudgy bakery muffins the recipe promised. They mostly taste like baking soda. With just a mild chocolate flavour. They are light like a cupcake and the crumb is nice and tender, but the flavour just isn't there! I stuck pretty much to the recipe this go 'round, only swapping out some of the white sugar for brown. I think I'll make a few more changes next time though and see if I can come up with something that I like better.

I think these muffins would actually work really well with whole wheat flour. Chocolate and banana are both good strong flavours that should stand up well to the whole wheat without being overwhelmed by it. At the same time, I think the slight nuttiness of the whole wheat will add a nice extra layer of flavour to them. And I think the extra fibre provided by the bran will provide a pleasant texture and mouthfeel that will make them seem a bit more virtuous and breakfast-y.

I'm also definitely going to swap out the baking soda for baking powder. I was surprised that the original recipe called only for soda and so much of it as well. I was tempted to swap it out this time, but I thought I should try to stick to the recipe to give it a fair chance and to give myself a baseline to work from. I can now definitively say that baking soda is NOT the way to go for this one though!

To improve the banana and chocolate flavour, I figured I'd toss in an extra banana and some melted dark chocolate. The cocoa powder on its own just wasn't cutting it. It just wasn't chocolate-y enough! I'll start out with just a small amount of chocolate, but I suspect I may want to add even more than I've listed below. The extra banana should help to boost the banana flavour as well as add a bit of extra sweetness without needing to dip into sugar jar again. As with the chocolate, I suspect that I may want to add even more banana, but I'll start with just one more and see where that gets me first.

The recipe I'm writing up below is NOT the recipe I made today. It is untested and presented as-is and without any guarantees of tastiness or edibility. I'll include a link to the recipe that I used today in case you want to try it in its original form. What I'm writing up here is basically a notes-to-myself version of what I want to try next time that incorporates the changes outlined above. Hopefully I'll be able to come back sometime in the not-too-distant future and update this with a report on how this worked out.

Dark Chocolate Banana Muffins

Adapted from Fork Knife Swoon

Ingredients

• 7 Tbsp. milk
• 85g dark chocolate, divided
• 3 large ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/4 c. canola (or other neutral) oil
• 1/4 c. unsweetened applesauce
• 1 large egg
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp. Dutched cocoa powder
• 250g soft whole wheat flour
• 1/8 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/8 tsp. baking soda

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 190°C (375°F) and add liners to your muffin tin.
2. Heat the milk until very warm and steaming -- but not boiling! -- by whatever method you prefer. I like stove top, but microwave also works.
3. Coarsely chop the chocolate and mix half of it into the milk. Stir until chocolate is fully melted and and thoroughly mixed.
4. Stir in mashed bananas, vanilla, oil, applesauce, and egg.
5. Mix in both kinds of sugar.
6. Sift in cocoa and mix well.
7. Add flour and salt. Do not mix it in yet.
8. Sift baking powder and baking soda into the bowl on top of the flour.
9. NOW give it a good stir, mixing in all the dry ingredients.
10. Stir in the remaining chocolate chunks.
11. Spoon batter into lined muffin tin. This should be enough to make one dozen 5cm (2") muffins.
12. Bake at 190°C (375°F) for 16-18 minutes.
13. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.