bookcooker - Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins

Posted: 29 Oct 2014 

These muffins, from the "Baked: New Frontiers in Baking" book are a great example of a minimal effort, maximum reward recipe.  You can throw them together in 20 minutes and they take another 20 minutes or so to bake, and yet they are definitely something a little special.  What clearly makes them unique and more sophisticated than the average muffin is the addition of the instant espresso powder.  Pairing chocolate with coffee is obvious, but coffee and banana made me question this recipe briefly - but the coffee adds a nice depth to muffin, making it not too sweet.  This recipe is from the original Baked book from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, owner of the Brooklyn bakery of the same name.  When it came out a few years ago it seemed like the perfect Brooklyn hipster cookbook - baked goods styled with little plastic dears and such.   It is the real deal though, the recipes are both recipes you really want to make and recipes that work really well. 
The most famous recipe from the book is the "baked brownie", which I have made many times and it is my go to brownie recipe.  The brownies turn out glossy, rich, with the right balance between fudge-like consistency and depth of chocolate flavor.  There are other gems in here that you should give a try in addition to these amazing, easy muffins (maple walnut scones, chocolate pie, brewers blondies, classic sugar coookies) and many more I want to make (green tea cupcakes, malted milk cake, sweet and salty cake, icebox towers., pumpkin whoopie pies..)

As it so happens, this banana muffin recipe is perfect for two books I have recently read: Bittersweet by Miranda Beverly Whittemore and We are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.  I really loved both books, and they are both quite different - but one featured a scene with muffins, and to the other bananas are quite important.  Bitterwseet is about Mabel a freshman in college (and kind of an outcast) who strikes up an unlikely friendship with the beautiful, most popular, and rich girl in her class - Generva Winslow.  

This friendship buys her a summer at the beautiful compound of the Winslow family by a gorgeous lake.  The compound (or I should call it a "camp") is not luxurious but nevertheless screams money and privileged - owned for generations, sprawling, charming, with a dining hall and old Russian cook, a mass of towheaded kids running around and the perfect patriarch.  Mabel loves it immediately  - it represents everything she isn't and doesn't have. She makes herself at home but notices something is a little off pretty quickly.   

The book is filled with mystery, secrets, romance, friendship and some pretty dark stuff.  It is fun page turner I highly recommend.  Oh, and where do the muffins come in?  Mabel brings some homemade corn muffins to a Winslow grand party and the scrappy muffins really make her seem out of place at the fancy, catered perfect Winslow party
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