The Banana Muffin Recipe That Made Me Famous (Kind Of)

I promised I would never be the type of blog that makes you read through a whole story just to get to the recipe that prompted you to click on the link in the first place.

Well…I guess I lied. Twice. The first time was in my Paris post, where I made you read all the way to the bottom and then didn’t even put a recipe. The second is now, where I am making up for said post, but still making you read stuff.

You see, the Nice Muffins Megan story is a story that deserves to be told. So I, your humble messenger, will fulfill my sacred duty and try to relay the tale with the reverence it deserves. While not a long story, it is an important story. Let us begin.

2020: A Dark Time

The year was 2020 (a dark time). The location: Maine (a woefully underrated state).

I’d like to think I was a young, energetic engineer called in the heat of the pandemic to don my cape and fly across the country to save the world in the form of a Covid test. In reality, I was about a week out of college, greener than all the money I had just spent on my degree (#fighton), and was just doing my best to stay above water in a manufacturing site that was moving a hundred miles a minute.

The mission was clear: launch production of tests as quickly as possible to get them into the hands of Americans who desperately needed them. While everyone at that site rose to the challenge and then some, I could tell the hours and stress were starting to wear on them. Finally, it hit me. I knew what I could do to make an impact within my team. I would do what I do best – solve all my problems with copious amounts of baked goods.

Solving All My Problems With Baked Goods

Now, as any true quaratiner knows, banana bread was a cornerstone of the ~2020 Covid Experience~, right along the ranks of sourdough starters (long live Lil’ Yeasty), TV streaming services, and the infamous Zoom happy hour. My mom and I had spent weeks testing out different recipes and perfecting our craft. It was time to put them to the test.

As it was June of 2020 and the pandemic was in full swing, I was trying to think of a way to make banana bread less say, bready, and more Covid-friendly. To quiet my mind from a stressful day (of work, although the banana bread question was haunting me too), Chappie and I made one of our customary after work TJ Maxx trips. It was there, in the baking aisle, that the idea struck me.

Muffins.

Why don’t I just adapt our quarantine recipe to single serving iterations, the Best of Both Worlds? Genius.

A Lesson In Patience

Rather than rushing home to put my idea to the test, however, I waited about another month and a half before finally bringing in my creation. I was so new and so young that I didn’t want to diminish myself to “the girl who brings in baked goods” without first proving myself as an intelligent, capable engineer in my own right. An engineer who also happens to enjoy a hobby of baking sugary concoctions and bombarding people with unyielding positivity.  

So I waited for a while, building my street cred in a flurry of Operating Procedures, Process Development, and many, many machine validations. Finally, the moment presented itself. Production of the tests had just begun and the entire team was stretched to the brink.

It was muffin time.

Muffin Time

I hung up my cape for a night in exchange for an apron, and I got to work, gloved up and masked up to make Covid-friendly happiness-in-a-muffin-cup. I arrive at work the next morning excited to share these little servings of sunshine with the group.

On the whole, I get really positive feedback from my creation, and I see the muffins slowly disappear from the break room as the day goes on. Then someone comes up to me and says, “Your muffins are great, but you know who really loves them is Fred* (a coworker of higher ranking than I), he has like four wrappers on his desk.” Sure enough, when I walked by his desk a little later, the proof was there. I was beyond happy.

Nice Muffins Megan

Later on in the day, I am on the manufacturing floor with another group of engineers discussing the validation status of a certain machine. Fred walks up and joins the conversation. We start to walk towards a door into another room, and as I am passing through the door, my back turned to Fred, he says, completely unprompted, a quote that will go down in history…

“Uh…nice muffins Megan.”

And that kids is how I became famous (kind of), as not a single time went by after that that people did not go out of their way to a) eat my muffins and b) tell me that they were ~nice~. It became my signature recipe, my way to bribe people to like me, and a consistent hit to brighten up a room. And now with a few simple steps, *you too* can have nice muffins of your own!

*The name has been changed to preserve anonymity

Nice Muffins Megan Banana Muffins

Serving Size: 12 Large Muffins

Cook Time: 25-30 Minutes

Prep Time: 20 Minutes

Ingredients

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line paper baking cups on a flat cookie sheet. You can also use a traditional muffin pan but I have found these free standing muffin cups take baked goods to the next level. You can also usually find them at Home Goods.
2. In a large bowl, use a stand or handheld mixer to beat together the butter, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla until well blended. If, like me currently, you have neither of these options you can use a whisk/fork and high pain tolerance to hand beat. It helps if you’re angry about something to really put some oomph into it.
3. Mash bananas in a separate bowl, a fork works well to do this. Add bananas and mix until combined.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter mixture and beat (or angrily whisk) until just combined.
5. Add the chocolate chips. And then add a few more because theres no such thing as too many chocolate chips. Then snack on a few from the bag because that’s just the rules of baking. Mix until combined.
6. Use a spoon to fill cups about 2/3 of the way full. Sprinkle coarse sugar or a brown sugar/cinnamon mixture on top of the muffins.
7. Bake 25-30 minutes for large muffins, 10-15 minutes for small muffins. If your oven doesn’t have and temperature or time markings on it like mine, then bake not with times, but with vibes. Test a muffin with a toothpick, it should come out clean.

Tips

• You can use 1 cup All-Purpose flour and 3/4 cup whole wheat flour for a nuttier, slightly healthier version
• If you’re feeling really crazy, substitute 1/2 -3/4 cup pumpkin puree for 1-2 bananas
• Test one of them straight out of the oven because there are few things in the world that are more magical than a warm, fresh banana muffin