Banana Cupcakes with Double Chocolate Chips

I wish all my readers a happy, healthy and delicious 2009. May your taste buds be tickled pink with scrumptious decadence during the year!

Oh and do you know what Santa got me? A KitchenAid! I’m now a proud owner of the Classic Stand Mixer, thanks to my uncle who carted the 15-odd kilogram thing all the way from London. I've got family over from there for the New Year's, so the house is full of energy with the 3 boys (aged 2, 5 and 13) running amuck playing with their toys and doing what young boys do. They're such angels and it's so nice to have them around.

So while I have been a delinquent blogger in the past two weeks, my oven has been working overtime, thanks to my cute little 5 y.o. cousin who demands vanilla cupcakes with frosting and chocolate chip muffins! I absolutely *LOVE* my new KA and I can’t believe I finally own one! Baking has become soooo much more efficient - I can go all about the place doing my thing and be back and have the luscious and shiny creamed sugar ready in no time. Hooray, Kitchen Aid!

So back to bringing in the New Year - why not indulge a little with cupcakes for breakfast followed by a tiny generous, smear of Nutella. You just can’t go wrong then, can you?

A bunch of bananas in the fruit basket and the jar of chocolate chips tempted me to put both of them together for the softest banana cupcake ever. Although this recipe is inspired from The Banana Cupcakes seen at Allrecipes, I’ve made some changes based on user feedback, some on intuition and some for taste to get these light and moist banana cupcakes – a far cry from the dense banana bread.

Banana Cupcakes with Double Chocolate Chips
The batter yields 6 large cupcakes and 3 mini loaves

1/2 cup / 100g butter
1 ¼ cups / 250g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup / 225g bananas, mashed (I didn’t use ripe ones as I didn’t want the banana to have a very overpowering flavour)
½ cup / 100 ml warm milk
2 cups / 250g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup / 50g Dark chocolate chips
¼ cup / 50g White chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 175°C / 350°F
2. Cream together the butter and sugar.
3. Add the eggs, vanilla, mashed bananas.
4. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
5. Add flour and milk in the following order: 1/3rd flour, ½ the milk, 1/3rd flour, rest half of the milk and finally the remaining 1/3rd flour till well combined.
6. Stir in the chocolate chips and reserve some for the top.
   
7. Bake for 20-25 (when using mini loaf pan or large cupcake mould, else reduce the time and check with wooden skewer) minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean.

I like to have them when they’re still a bit warm and down some immediately with milk or spread with Nutella! Yummy! Result : 6 cupcakes made, which were eaten by the cousins and my sister and the 3 loaves for the adults. And it only took a couple of minutes of working time to make and was ready before the boys were up!

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