Optional Egg

Every once in a while, my daughter decides she wants bananas in her cereal. Inevitably, there are mornings in which cereal doesn't end up being on the breakfast table or bananas just don't make it into her cereal bowl. This leaves us with a bunch of bananas needing fairly immediate attention. But that just means there can be a different way for the bananas to make it to the breakfast table:

These lovelies are packed with lots of banana flavor. Four ripe bananas — we're talking nearing baby food mushy - find their way into this batter. In fact, there is so much banana in the batter that this recipe doesn't require any eggs to act as binders in it. Instead, you can opt to add one egg to increase the overall richness of the muffins, but you can also just leave it out. That's right: this is a muffin recipe that require no eggs. This might not seem like a big deal until you think about the baked good recipes out there and how ubiquitious eggs are in them. And when you have plans for the eggs you have on hand or, worse yet, no eggs at home at all, a recipe that will put absolutely wonderful banana muffins on your table without them can seem downright magical.

In addition to a wonderful, moist banana base, this muffin recipe boasts sweet pockets of dark chocolate chips and a generous inclusion of chopped pecans. If you don't have pecans on hand, walnuts or almonds could be easily substituted or nuts could be omitted entirely. That said, the muffins made as indicated below are amazing and tasty whether they are served warm, at room temperature, or even out of the refrigerator. I've even been known to double a batch and freeze at least half of them for quick breakfast, snack, or dessert options when time isn't on my side another day. Now, that's a bit of magic!