There’s an art to choosing the right bunch of bananas. They can’t be too green (because I won’t eat them if they are AT ALL green) and they can’t be too NON-green because then nobody else will eat them and I can’t eat an entire bunch of bananas all by myself before they get so ripe that the skin is falling off of them — unless of course I choose a bunch that only has like three bananas on it. Which is silly. Who can buy just three bananas?
So yea. Lately I’ve not been doing a very good job of the banana choosing or the banana eating. I threw three bananas into the trash right before BlogHer ’13 and I swore I wouldn’t do that again when I bought this last batch. But, apparently I bought too ripe bananas because nobody ate them except me and by the time there were three very ripe bananas left, I was all banana’d out.
Which means I moved on to saying, “I’m going to make banana bread with those, before they turn into liquid banana goo all over the counter.” But errr, days passed and the banana bread didn’t get baked.
So I said, “I’m going to make banana muffins in the Ninja Cooking System! (And a loaf of banana bread the regular way!)” I was sure this would inspire me to get off my ass and just use the bananas.
Except it didn’t. Yesterday was go ninja or go to the trash bin with the bananas.
Since Skye says I am ninja, I had to make it happen even though I had no damn time to make banana muffins or banana bread. Mondays are usually slow work days for me (when I’ve worked four-six hours over the weekend) but they aren’t usually slow enough for baking. I bit the bullet and made the time.
Which was hard since I had absolutely no freaking clue as to how to make these banana muffins in the Ninja Cooking System.
The little cookbook says something about adding X amount of water for every 10 minutes. Which umm didn’t help because how long do you cook mini one bite (not two bite) banana muffins for, anyway? It also said something about using less fat. But how much less? I shrugged and guessed. I also turned to the back of the cookbook and found some recipe that looked like mini chocolate cupcakes and used those instructions.
Errr except I over-filled the little tiny one bite (note two bite) silicone muffin pan. And also, I have no idea if I picked the right amount of time to cook these things.
They turned out … fine. Not exactly like a normally baked banana muffin might turn out, but close enough. They certainly tasted just fine. They just didn’t really brown like a normally baked muffin might brown, (which is really a good thing for me, since I don’t really like muffins that are too “brown” on the outside.)
The biggest issue is that good grief, do you know how long it would take to turn the entire batch of banana bread batter into little tiny one bite (not two bite) banana muffins? HOURS and HOURS. Who has the time or patience for that?
I do, however, think this is going to come in handy for those times when you’re making muffins or cupcakes or brownies and you have just a wee bit of batter leftover that is too much to fill another full muffin tin or will only fill a couple of tins in your muffin pan so you either eat the batter with a spoon or throw it out rather than make another muffin tin dirty for no really good reason. (What? Am I the only one who has that issue?)
You can use a normal LOAF pan in the ninja. And eating banana bread batter is disgusting.
You don’t need to throw bananas in the trash because they’re getting too ripe! This is what you do with very ripe bananas: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-creamy-ice-cream-w-93414
Throw them in the freezer then when you’re ready to make the “ice cream”, take them out, cut the skins off with a knife and whizz them in the food processor/blender until they’re ice-cream-like. Add cinnamon and choc chips, add peanut butter and/or honey. It’s delicious and far less effort than making a huge pile of teeny muffins. Although they do look tasty.
It will hold a whole regular sized loaf pan? They look good Denise! And Sam is right, you can just peel and freeze your ripe bananas. The babies love them frozen sliced. And… I’ve made banana bread from thawed out frozen bananas! Don’t toss them (they make the trash stink anyway)!
I end up over filling the muffin tin if I have left over batter. Or eat the batter, even banana bread batter.