No French Toast

Monday was a rainy, snowy winter day. For me, there's no better time to bake something.

The French toast mentioned in the previous post was considered.

BUT there were several ripening bananas and a couple of apples on hand, which could only mean one thing here — it was time to make muffins, much to Grenville's delight (and mine as well).

There's a lot of banana muffin recipes out there and so many variations. Here's a few of mine: use both white and whole wheat flour, honey and brown sugar substitute (vs. white sugar), replace cooking oil with butter. Of course, a healthier change is to use applesauce in place of sugars, and/or add yogurt for moistness.

This recipe yields 12 "regular" muffins; our tins are labelled "Texas-size" and yields 6 large muffins instead, which we definitely prefer.

Banana Apple Muffins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; grease bottom of muffin tin or use non-stick cooking spray. You could skip the grease/spray and line muffin tin with paper cups. No paper liners for me as it seems a waste, plus we never have any on hand.

• 3 ripe bananas, mashed
• 2 small apples, peeled and chopped fine (you could use a food processor)
• 1/2 C butter, melted
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 C white flour (I prefer King Arthur flour)
• 1 C whole wheat flour
• 1/4 C brown sugar substitute (Splenda or equivalent)
• 1/4 C honey
• 1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt

1. Mash bananas, then cut apples in small pieces, and mix together, add vanilla extract. (You could use a small food processor for the apples; my preference is less tools used means less cleanup.)
2. Measure flours in separate bowl, add in other dry ingredients (baking soda, baking power, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt)
3. Stir banana and apple mix into dry ingredients.
4. Add in beaten egg and melted butter. Mix all ingredients together until flour is moistened, but do not over stir.
5. Bake 25-30 minutes until tester comes out dry. Cool on rack before tasting, if you can wait that long.

Of course, Grenville and I had to sample (we shared)one. And, the white chocolate/macadamia creamer was a wonderful accompaniment to the coffee.

Grenville declared this recipe was a keeper and that's high praise indeed. Leftovers DO freeze well, if you can refrain from eating them all first.

IF you were are in one of the states affected by this latest winter blast, we hope you were safely indoors.

Spring arrives later this month, so we've heard.

Lots of folks are so VERY ready.