Banana Pecan Muffins

               Today’s recipe is a muffin.. How exactly is a muffin different form a cupcake!!! There are loads of opinions on this... But for me, cupcake is a sweet and light cake, whereas muffin is more dense heavy, almost a bread.

    Neil was also behind my life for a “Caaaaaaaaaakeeee”. So I decided to whip up some muffins for breakfast. Neil didnt eat these muffins. These werent CAKE..For him cake is Chocolate cake only. So i did make a chocolate cake for him later,, thats another cute story for another time.

               When we were in USA, we used to love muffins from Cosco, chocochip and blueberry muffins. Whenever we went out on roadtrips, we used to carry few muffins with us. Half a muffin was a filling breakfast for each of us, they were that big and yummmmmmmm. I am almost drooling now.. How much I miss Cosco,, Cosco is a chain of supermarkets where you get anything and everything at amazing deals and best quality...

Anyways coming back to the recipe, I have got small bag of pecans and I really wanted to make something special outta it, but not sweet and fattening.. Also I had few overripe bananas waiting to be consumed., If you dont have pecans, substitute them with walnuts... I found Pecans are quite similar in taste to walnuts, just that I find pecans little milder and sweeter than walnuts.. So if you are substituting walnuts for pecans, I would suggest to use roasted walnuts.. This banana and pecan muffins turned out to be really nice.

                Muffins tasted best when they were warm, jut out of the oven. If you are going to eat them later, warm them in microwave and have them. 

              Its great way to start your day with warm muffin and cup of hot coffee..

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup all purpose flour (maida)
  
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp cinnamon powder
• 2 ripe elachi bananas
• 4 tbsp soft butter
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp cream
• ¼ cup chopped pecans

Method

• Sift together the flour,baking powder & cinnamon powder.
• Peel the bananas and mash them with fork. I have used 2 small elachi bananas, but you could also substitute 1 large ripe bananas. The bananas have to be overripe, as it intensifies the flavor of bananas.
• Put the butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and beat them till very light and fluffy. Then add the egg and beat well. Add mashed bananas and cream.
• Using rubber spatula/ wooden spoon, fold in flour mixture and chopped pecans. Dont overmix the batter as it will make the muffins heavy. Stir the batter just enough to combine the ingredients roughly.
  
• Put 6 paper liners in muffin pan.
• Spoon the batter in the muffin pan. It does look lumpy and you will wonder if you needed to add more milk and make it smooth... DON'T.. They will turn out right when the batter is lumpy..
• Bake the muffins in preheated oven 190 C/ 375 F for about 20 min until well risen and light golden brown.

This recipe makes 6 Banana Pecan Muffins.. If you want more just double/ triple the recipe.. The muffins are not very sweet, have mild flavor of cinnamon and sweetness of banana with a crunch of pecans.