Banana or Custard apple muffins: Choose your fruit!

My previous post talks about my recent discovery and fascination with a new baking supple store in Bangalore; well not a ‘new’ store but one that I ‘newly discovered’. My shopping spree at this store included these very dainty looking polka dotted muffin cups. Not only are they bake-proof but they have a plastic sort of lining within which allows you the leisure of not having to grease your muffin cups. Just get them out of the cupboard, pour you batter and bake! No fuss with the muffin trays and the parchment paper! At one rupee per cup, I think it’s a fair deal. You need to buy a minimum of 100 pieces, but that has never stopped a keen baker.

I am a big fan of custard apples and managed to get some really sweet and flavourful ones from a fruit vendor close to home. So I substituted my trademark banana muffin recipe for custard apples. It did take me some patience to deseed the fruit, but I can say with some relief that the results did bear fruit; pun intended. I always bake this recipe in my loaf tin and never realized that it can make up to 16 medium sized muffins! Imagine my little cousin’s delight when she came home to visit us for her Diwali break and was absolutely thrilled to find not only my grandmum’s chaklis and pedas but my muffins and brownies too!

You will be pleasantly surprised to know that this recipe works perfectly well even when you just dump all the ingredients into one big bowl, mix well and bake! You don’t need to actually follow the recipe; but for the perfectionists out there here’s the detailed recipe anyway!

Prep time: 15 min

Cooking time: 60 min    

Serves: Makes 16 muffins

Ingredients

If using bananas:

175g unsalted butter, softened and chopped

175g brown sugar

110g caster sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

3 medium or 2 large bananas, mashed

3 eggs

300 g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp clear vanilla essence

If using custard apple:

Replace the bananas with 2 custard apples, deseeded and pulp mashed; remove the cinnamon powder from the recipe.

Method

Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease your muffin cups or muffin trays.

First, cream the sugars and butter in large bowl till you achieve a smooth and matt finish.  Separate the egg whites from the yellows. Beat the egg whites till soft peaks form. Add the egg yellows to the beaten whites and beat some more. Add the vanilla essence and whisk for a minute. Sift the flour with the baking powder.  Add the flour and the whisked eggs to the creamed sugars, alternating them; folding gently till you see a smooth batter without any lumps. Fold in the fruit purée and cinnamon powder (no cinnamon powder for custard apple muffins). Spoon carefully into muffin cups, ensuring that only 3/4^th of the cup is full (allow space for the muffins to rise in the oven). Place muffin cups on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Bake at 170°C for 1 hour or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Serve muffins warm with a cup of English breakfast tea. Delightful!