Banana Muffins

It's been a little while since I've been able to do any baking so with my semi day off today I decided to make the next thing on my list from Jo Wheatley's book, Banana Muffins Page 148. 

The first obstacle I had to overcome was lack of buttermilk. There was none in the local shop, therefore I improvised and added lemon juice to milk, apparently this is pretty much the same thing any way. It worked ok I think. As usual I used flora instead of butter but apart from that I tried to stick to the recipe. 

Mashed bananas

The first step is to make a crumble topping for the cakes, it's just the simple flour, sugar, butter and little spice. As usual mine wasn't crumbly enough and turned into a moist paste, however, I tried to use it anyway. 

The next step was to add all the dry ingredients together, and all the wet, and the combine the two. It was very easy and didn't even need the electric whisk just fold it in. 

I decided to make cupcakes instead of muffins so the portions were smaller and I could make more. I had to fill the cases quite high to use up all the mixture so in the oven they did slightly rise out. Place the crumble mixture on top before placing them in the oven. 

I'm not exactly sure how long the cakes took to bake as I wasn't watching the clock but it did seem to take quite a while and even now I'm not sure as they seem too moist and stuck to the case. 

Cakes fresh out of the oven

The second tray... there might be one missing!!! 

I agree with Jo that these are lovely and simple to make, I don't have any children to try and make them with but I'm sure this is a recipe they would enjoy with the mashing and the stirring. The banana taste is subtle but tasty and the crumble mixture gives a lovely crunch to the top of the cakes. It's a shame it stuck to the case and I lost half of the cake through that. 

The finished and cooled down product

Overall it was a tasty cake but not perfect, I'm going to mark it 6/10, ok but certainly not amazing. My husband is at work at present and won't want to eat something so unhealthy so for today this mark will be out of 10.