I am one of those individuals affected little by caffeine. A breakfast of coffee and muffin is nice but if the muffin is enhanced with espresso, that’s even better. I am anticipating a few days away from my kitchen so it was once again crunch time to use up all the perishables. I thought I counted my bananas right when I did weekend grocery shopping but it appeared Costco-fever strike again and I had two extra. That can only mean one thing, banana quickbread time!
Of course I love banana bread as much as anyone but it takes an hour of baking time for a regular-size loaf. When the clock is ticking, instant gratification counts. I did a quick search of my cookbook library using Eat Your Books and Heidi Swanson’s (101 Cookbooks) recipe for Espresso Banana Muffin from Super Natural Cooking came up. Did I mention how much I love my library on Eat Your Books? Making all my cookbooks digitally indexed and searchable is possibly one of the best fifty dollars I spent. Instead of gathering dust on the shelf, I get the most use out of my ever-expanding cookbook collection.
The batter was quick and easy to put together. Although the recipe instructed to cream the butter and sugar, I opted to make it using the classic quickbread method using melted butter. With 2 teaspoon of baking powder in the recipe, the physical leavening from creaming is not really necessary. I was one banana short of getting 1 1/2 cup of puree so I supplemented with unsweetened apple sauce. Similarly with the yogurt, I used a mixture of Greek yogurt, buttermilk, and sour cream to fulfill the 1 cup requirement.
This muffin was very moist and tender the day it was baked. The espresso flavour could have been more assertive but the aroma of was a mouth-watering mix of coffee and baking that fooled me into thinking my kitchen turned into the local cafe. I like the fact that 100% whole wheat flour was used in this recipe with no compromise to the texture. This is definitely a wonderful standby for a decadent breakfast. Who doesn’t want to wake up to the smell of fresh coffee and muffins?

Those muffins look very appetizing! They definitely look like they'd go great with coffee.
Posted by: yummychunklet | February 19, 2011 at 08:11 PM
That is just a perfect photo. The muffins look incredible. I have never heard of Eat Your Books before - thanks for telling us about it. It must make browsing for recipes so much easier.
Posted by: Elaine | February 19, 2011 at 09:01 PM
@Elaine I hope you'll give Eat Your Books a try. They have a free month-long trial membership. I find it so incredibly useful especially when I want to search for recipe by ingrediennt. It gave new life to some old cookbooks that I haven't touch in a long time.
Posted by: DessertByCandy | February 19, 2011 at 09:43 PM