Jittery Monkey Muffins

Jittery Monkey Muffins

By Kevin Hunsperger
@kevinhunsperger & @my123cents on Twitter
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I've had the pleasure of participating in a fundraiser here in southern Illinois called 100 Men Who Cook for four of the last five years.  Each year I try to come up with something clever and this year I decided to do some shameless promotion of my podcast on the Jittery Monkey Podcasting Network.

I came across a recipe by Paula Deen on the Food Network's website, thanks to a friend of mine.  It was just called Michael's Banana Coffee Muffins.  I thought, why not tweak the recipe a tad and change the name to Jittery Monkey Muffins.  Coffee makes you jittery and monkeys love bananas.  It writes itself.  

So that's what I did.  The only big changes I made was swapping out the pecans for chocolate chips.  I wasn't sure if people at the event would have nut allergies, plus I love chocolate.  Because the event serves a huge number of people, I made them mini muffins by putting them in my daughter's cake pop maker.  They bake in about 3 minutes doing that and for mass production it just made more sense.  They aren't as pretty, but I thought they tasted pretty good, so did many of the people who sampled.  

My table

Since I was going with the wrestling theme, I decorated my table with some old LJN figures and coffee cups to get the "jittery" effect in place.  I also put out a few business cards and donned a lucha mask with my chef hat.  I know I looked goofy and it was impossible to eat without making a mess, but I had a good time and I think others did too.  Plus it was for a good cause as thousands of dollars was raised for the group This Able Veteran.

Yeah, I'm weird

Jittery Monkey Muffins or Michael's Banana Coffee Muffins

Ingredients

1/3 cup melted butter
4 ripe bananas, smashed
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoons strong coffee
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted or raw (instead I put in about a half bag of chocolate chips)


Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 12 cup capacity muffin tin or use paper liners.

With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, coffee and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour, mix until it is just incorporated. Fold in the chopped pecans. Pour mixture into a prepared muffin tin. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes. Cool on a rack.

*Cook's note: To check to see if the muffins are done; with a toothpick insert into the center of a muffin, if it comes out clean, it's done.

Recipe courtesy of Paula Deen