These developed from the entire lack of butter in the house, and the incidental leftover bowl of toffee sauce which I made for my yummy american-style pancakes a few days ago. It is adapted from an a recipe I found online.
Ingredients you will need:
2-3 ripe bananas
2 eggs
250g plain flour
3 tsps baking powder
150ml milk
5tbsp sunflower oil
100ml caramel sauce (you can get the shop-bought kind or look up a recipe online, mine was sugar, butter and double cream)
180 degrees, 20 minutes
Actually I really didn’t measure the caramel sauce at all. I just had about half a cereal bowl left and poured the lot in. It might even be just fine to add about 150g sugar to this recipe and just use the caramel for the swirling part. But anyway, read on and you can decide.
First thing you want to do is get two bowls. In one, put the flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt (I also put in a sachet of vanilla sugar for the hell of it) In the other, put the milk, the beaten eggs, the oil, the bananas (mash in a separate bowl) and combine it. This done, add this bowl to the first and mix it with a wooden spoon, just enough to combine. Don’t overmix it, you don’t want to kill your muffins.
Once you have the mix, it’s caramel time! Actually my mix may have been a little wet, so possibly add a bit more flour for a firmer mix. Add about three quarters of the caramel to the mix and give it a few stirs so it is swirled but not completely gone. This works better with a thicker caramel and a thicker batter; mine all just kind of combined, but it still tasted amazing. Still, I was going for little swirls of toffee in my muffins which didn’t quite happen.
At this stage, it’s time to put the batter in your muffin tray. I just greased it, cos the tin I used was a funky shape and I couldn’t be bothered to mess about with greaseproof paper, and they came out no trouble. About three quarters filled should do it, mine made a perfect dozen.
At this point, it’s time to do the fun bit – my caramel swirls didn’t pan out so I put an extra half-teaspoon of caramel on each muffin and swirled it a little bit with a skewer.
This gave them a nice bit of sticky toffee on the top, which is my favourite part. You could also save some to drizzle over the top once cooked, though, I thought about it, but by that point I was running low on caramel and I wanted to eat the rest with a spoon.
Stick them in the oven (which you preheated even though I forgot to mention that part) and give them 20 minutes then test them with a skewer to the centre – you know the drill, if it comes out clean, they’re done. If not, stick them back in for a few more minutes.
These are highly recommended. They were moist and tasty, with a nice caramel flavour. Note there’s no sugar, the caramel and banana give it plenty of sweetness. Like I said, bought caramel is fine too. I recall you can buy it in a can. Enjoy!
frozenpixie 