Banana chocolate muffins - sweet and simple bakes

I made these banana chocolate muffins for the monthly baking event run by Rosie and Maria at sweet and simple bakes. They have set up a blog for new bakers in particular, but anyone who enjoys baking. You can read more about why they set up the blog here. I wouldn't say that I'm a new baker particularly, but I tend to stick to relatively simple recipes - anything calling for millions of steps involving separating eggs, repeatedly rolling, folding and chilling etc etc doesn't get a second look. Well, not until I see the usually fabulous picture, at which point the recipe gets a second look and a big sigh as I realise that I cannot hope to recreate something so fantastic! So sweet and simple is just up my street!

Ripe bananas are essential here, and the riper the better (well, until the fruit flies start circling I suppose). You can see in the top picture that my bananas were just starting to go speckled, and could have done with a few more days (which I unfortunately didn't have) so that they started looking more like the picture below.

Anyway, onto the recipe: (original here)

Banana chocolate chip muffins

Ingredients
3 very ripe bananas

125ml sunflower oil

2 eggs

250g plain flour

100g caster sugar

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

150g dark chocolate chopped into chunks

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan oven/gas mark 6 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with muffin papers.
Mash the bananas and set aside for a moment.Pour the oil into a jug and beat in the eggs.
Put the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder into a large bowl and mix in the beaten-egg-and-oil mixture, followed by the mashed bananas.
Fold in the chocolate chunks, then place equal quantities in the prepared muffin tin and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

The recipe was very easy to follow and worked very well. I thought that the muffins might not rise very well, but they were fine, and the texture was light and moist. I used 72% chocolate because I prefer dark chocolate, but on reflection perhaps it was a little too powerful for these muffins. I have to admit that I've made banana breads to use up overripe bananas that I've enjoyed more than these muffins, but don't let my prejudice put you off making them, because they were perfectly nice and went down very well with colleagues at work.

One where the chocolate chunks started to get away.......