Nigella's Chocolate Banana Muffins

Nigella’s Chocolate Banana Muffin recipe appealed to me for several reasons:

• I often have overripe bananas that I can’t bear to throw out.
• Unlike cakes, muffins don’t need to be decorated so they require less effort (still, I couldn’t resist straying from the original recipe and stirring some dark chocolate chips into the uncooked mixture to add a bit of texture and interest).
• These muffins can be frozen for up to two months. I’m unlikely to get through twelve muffins in their shelf life of three days so this is exceptionally useful. To revive the frozen muffins, defrost them for 3-4 hours and then pop them in an oven for 5-8 minutes.

In the event of baked goods not rising, Nigella suggests checking the expiration date of your bicarbonate of soda/baking powder. I’ve yet to suffer this disappointment but when I checked the expiration date of my raising agents they had indeed expired. For this reason, I halved the quantity of plain flour/bicarbonate of soda, substituting the other half with self-raising flour and the muffins rose spectacularly.

I’m not sure how Nigella’s muffins manage to have a glossy top where mine are matte but nevertheless, they taste lovely and have a light, moist texture due to the bananas.