My Favorite Muffins

I don’t, as a rule, like muffins. I’m not sure why…I love scones, biscuits, cake, all those things that have some muffin characteristics. I just don’t care for them. Except these. They rock.

Banana-Pumpkin Muffins

4 Tbsp butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 of a 15 oz can of pumpkin
1 banana, mashed
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 3/4 cups white whole-wheat flour (I use King Arthur brand; regular whole wheat will be too heavy, so if you don’t have white whole wheat, use 1 cup white, 3/4 cup whole wheat)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips

Glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
2-3 Tbsp milk
1/2 tsp fiora di sicilia (see explanation below!)

Mix together butter, sugar, eggs, pumpkin, banana, and yogurt. Stir dry ingredients together in another bowl and add to butter mix. Fold in chocolate chips.

Use an ice-cream scoop to fill greased muffin tins about 2/3 full. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

After I made these, I decided they were too plain. So I made a glaze using fiora de sicilia, which is a vanilla-citrus extract from King Arthur Flour. It gives an amazing flavor to sugar cookies, frostings, whatever you usually use vanilla in and would like to tweak a bit. You could use just vanilla, orange extract, or a combination.

I put that in a ziploc, cut the corner, and drizzled on top. Then I used my microplane and added just a bit of orange zest on top. It was exactly the finishing touch they needed.

And then I sent them off to work with the hubs because it’s Friday and that’s the only commander’s wife-ish thing I do at this battalion…treats every Friday. A few fell out, though, so the rest of us had them for breakfast…yummy!