We’ve got a grocery situation in our house, meaning we are out of just about everything. On Saturday morning I didn’t feel like eating another bowl of cold cereal. I wanted toast, but we’re down to a heel of bread that is probably past its prime anyway. We did, however, have a couple of bananas on brink of extinction. And of course I’m almost always loaded to the gills with baking ingredients. The obvious solution was to bake banana bread.

I’m a good baker but I’ve had my share of issues with banana bread in the past. Sometimes it’s underbaked, or I turn it out of the loaf pan too soon and watch it crumble into a pile of disappointment before my eyes, or it’s too dry and tastes like flour. Also, depending on the recipe, it can take a really long time to bake. I wanted to avoid all of these things and so I decided to make banana bread muffins.

This recipe is adapted from one I found on Food.com. The main modifications are that I used melted butter and added spices. Melting the butter allows you to skip waiting for the butter to come to room temperature, which is nice if you’re impatient like me.

Quick Banana Bread Muffins

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup one stick butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
3 -4 over ripe bananas (I used 2 smallish bananas and the muffins had plenty of banana flavor)
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 and place cupcake liners in muffin tin. Melt butter in a glass container in the microwave and set aside to cool. In a small bowl, mash peeled bananas with a fork. In a large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add eggs, mashed bananas and cooled melted butter, stir (you can use a hand mixer but I used a wooden spoon). Spoon batter into cupcake liners, filling 3/4 full. Bake for 20 minutes. Muffins are done baking when a pick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Serve with butter, cream cheese, Nutella or peanut butter (but they’re good plain, too).