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The Batter Thickens

A food blog balancing sweet treats & healthy eats.

Chocolate Gingerbread Banana Bread Muffins

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When my family goes on a vacation that requires grocery shopping to stock up our place for a week or two, it seems my role is to be the one to take home the leftovers. Which is fine, I elect to take this role most of the time. But it also means I have to get creative in using up the food – because sometimes it is a lot for one person. Or, it needs to be eaten quickly – like the extra overripe bananas I got after our Thanksgiving week. So when I got home, I decided to immediately transform them into these Chocolate Gingerbread Banana Bread Muffins.

Chocolate gingerbread is on the brain because I have a few other plans for it this year. I was thinking about this cake recently, and thinking that I need to do a bit more with the chocolate gingerbread combo! So since I wanted to do more with the flavors, it seemed like a good use for those leftover bananas.

I was slightly worried about using bananas in the base, but they don’t really impact the flavor. They sweeten it, but the chocolate and gingerbread covers up any major banana flavor! So don’t be put off by the banana-gingerbread combo.

As we enter December, I’ve been thinking about doing various “yearly recaps.” I’ve been keeping spreadsheets to track all my hobbies this year. (I said in my very first blog post of this year that I was still catching up on the year prior, and that I liked to set goals only after I’d built up habits. So I spent a lot of this year tracking my hobbies and things that could turn into goals.)

And I think I could try and come up with some sort of year in review for the blog. I’m not sure what though. But as I make these muffins knowing that there’s a few more chocolate gingerbread posts coming up the pipeline, it might be fun to do some sort of grouping of posts by flavor to see what phases I went through this year – since I tend to make a few things with similar flavor combinations at a time.

If anyone has any other ideas for a creative yearly recap for the blog, let me know… Or frankly, any of my other hobbies. Because I have a lot of data, but there’s only so many Spotify Wrapped parodies I have it in me to make.

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Chocolate Gingerbread Muffins (Banana Bread)

  • Author: Audrey
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Ingredients

  • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
  • ¾ cup dark brown sugar packed
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons molasses
  • 1 cup mashed ripe bananas about 3 large bananas
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon cloves
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¾ – 1 cup dark chocolate chunks plus more for topping

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F and line a standard 12 cup non stick muffin tin with paper liners.
  2. In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, butter, egg, vanilla, and molasses.
  3. Whisk in mashed bananas.
  4. Add in flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, spices, and salt. Use a spatula to mix. Don’t over mix.
  5. Gently stir in dark chocolate chunks.
  6. Scoop evenly into prepared muffin tin. You should get 9 muffins.
  7. Top with a few more chocolate chips.
  8. Bake for 5 minutes at 425 degrees F and then lower heat to 350 degrees F (keep muffins in oven)
  9. Bake an additional 12-14 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out *almost* clean.
  10. Remove from pan and enjoy!

Notes

Adapted from Show Me the Yummy

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