Adventures in Baking

I awoke this morning and entered my kitchen with three realizations:
- I am hungry (and not for my usual cereal)
- Those bananas are looking a little sad
- Those blueberries are looking a little sad!

Now, I am not the cook in this relationship. But with Ben's somewhat unaccommodating work schedule, I've been faced with two choices: flee from the kitchen in terror and retreat to takeout menus, or embrace this as an opportunity to experiment (and yes, make some errors) in cooking. This morning's realizations seemed like an awesome opportunity to concoct some muffins, so here is the recipe for my own little experiment, combining elements of various muffin recipes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (an awesome cookbook to own)...

Blueberry Banana Muffin Recipe
Ingredients:
2 Cups flour (I used 1 Cup all-purpose and 1 Cup whole-wheat)
1/2 Cup sugar (plus extra for sprinkling on top)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 Tablespoon melted butter (plus extra for greasing the tin)
2 overripe mashed bananas
1/4 Cup plain yogurt
1/4 Cup milk (I added this after everything was mixed since the batter looked too dry)
1 Cup fresh blueberries

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400ºF. Grease a 12 compartment muffin tin with butter.
Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Beat together the egg, butter, bananas, and yogurt.
Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients with a spoon or spatula (you don't want to mix too much, the dry ingredients should be moistened but not totally smooth.) This is where I added a splash of milk (you can see from the second picture that my batter was too dry.) Stir in the blueberries.
Spoon the batter into the muffin tin compartments. Sprinkle the tops with sugar (and cinnamon, if you like.)
Bake 20-25 minutes, or until the muffins are nicely browned. Remove from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes before removing them from the tin (in my case, I let all but one sit for 5 minutes.)

The verdict: Good tasting and a moderately healthier option than some other muffin recipes (with the use of whole wheat flour and yogurt). But, I think they could have stood to have a bit more sugar in them. Next time, I might also try adding some lemon zest to the batter and nixing the cinnamon on top. But all in all, a delicious and filling muffin.