Our favorite choco-banana muffins

Baby S is a very picky eater.  He will eat hamburgers, chicken nuggets, fries and pizza.  That's about it for suppertime foods.  He is not a fan of any fruits or vegetables.  So we have to sneak a lot of them into his diet.  And muffins turn fruit into cake, which Baby S loves.

I used to just make banana bread and pour it into muffin cups.  They were good, but pretty dense, just like banana bread.  Then my husband's Mum shared a banana muffin recipe with me, and I've never looked back.  They turn out super light and fluffy.  You can already tell the difference in the batter before they're baked.  But the very best part is that you only need to use one bowl for mixing - yay for less dirty dishes!

½ cup margarine
½ cup sugar
1 egg
2 very ripe bananas
1 ½ cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. hot water
1 tsp. vanilla
½ cup chocolate chips (I use milk chocolate, but I know semi-sweet is a tooch healthier)

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, cream the margarine and sugar with an electric mixer.  Now mix in the egg and bananas, then the flour.  In a cup, stir the baking soda into the hot water, then pour it into your muffin batter and keep mixing.  Isn't it SUPER fluffy? We think the secret is in the the baking soda trick.   Add vanilla, mix like crazy and then stir in the chocolate chips by hand so they don't get melty or broken.

I know a lot of cookbooks say that the secret to great muffins is not to overmix them.  Well, I mix these bad boys up like mad and have never had a problem.

We like to use the tiny little muffin cups, but I really fill them, so that there's a goodly sized muffin top.  So we overfill 24 mini muffin cups and then bake them at 350ºF for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick or fork comes out clean.