Sugar Glazed Banana Walnut Muffins

I hate to waste food. It is of course not something anybody would like doing. Especially when it comes to fruit, I hate to see myself throw away rotten fruit when I know I could have eaten it in the raw - What more can a lazy person ask for? No cutting, no chopping. Just wash and eat. Well, so much for natures such gifts, we always end up in situations where we have foods reaching the peak of their flavour and sometimes we just don't know what to do with the same. This happens most of the time, in our house, with bananas. We eat a couple, then they go over-ripe and then into the garbage pail. But, this slowly changed ever since I discovered the recipe for Banana Bread over a couple years ago. Not that I'd bake this every time we had over-ripe bananas, but its just such a wonderful way to use up fruit than to throw it away.

This time around I decided to twist the Banana Bread recipe to the muffin version. I even decided on adding walnuts since they perfectly compliment banana muffins. And, of course I topped it all off with a sugar glaze. One bite into this fella and you know you ain't sharing him with anybody!

These muffins are so easy to bake, if you are a newbie to baking, I'd suggest you try these. It will certainly up your confidence with respect to working with the ingredients and get you more friendly with your oven.

Although most baking recipes call for butter at room temperature (for cakes), I recently learnt that for muffins with a bread-like consistency you could use melted butter. So, I decided on trying the same for this recipe. Obviously the result was a bread-like muffin which is perfect for breakfast or as a snack. But if you are looking for a cake-like muffin then I suggest you follow steps that are similar to that of cake making. Cream together butter and sugar at room temperature, then get your eggs, vanilla essence and bananas in to make a wet mixture and combine with the dry ingredients. I followed the melted butter method for this. Do try both ways and let me know!

Ingredients for the Banana Walnut Muffins

1 1/2 Cups All purpose flour (Maida)

1 1/4 Cups Granulated sugar

1 1/4 Cups Unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp Baking soda

1 tsp Vanilla essence

2 Cups Mashed, over-ripe bananas

3 Eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 Cup Walnuts

A pinch of salt

Method

- Preheat oven to 350F and line muffin tray with baking cups

- Place walnuts on baking sheet and toss in oven for about 10 minutes to toast the nuts

- In the meanwhile, mix together flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and baking powder in a large bowl

- Pull out the toasted nuts, coarsely chop them and toss them into the flour(dry) mixture

- To the lightly beaten eggs, add the vanilla essence, melted butter and mix until just blended

- Now, stir the mashed bananas into this wet mixture

- Pour this wet mixture into the dry flour mixture and fold until just blended. DO NOT over mix and this will result in rubbery muffins. You want your batter to be just mixed, yet chunky

- Spoon the batter into prepared muffin tray and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out smoothly

- Cool completely before glazing with sugar

Ingredients for the Sugar Glaze

2 tbsp Water

1/2 to 3/4 cup Confectioner's Sugar/Powdered Sugar

Method

- Mix the water and sugar in a bowl until you get a smooth yet thick white paste like sugary syrup

- Adjust quantities of sugar/water if you find that your glaze is too thin/thick

- Use a spoon and drizzle the same over your muffins. I did so right over my muffins when they were still in their tray but completely cooled. Here's a pic of the same.

This recipe makes 12 delicious muffins!