Easy Banana Muffins

January deep winter. Leo is six weeks old and has started to smile, tentatively, at specific stimuli: Gary's face, the ceiling fan, and apparently certain things I say to him, which I choose not to over-examine because I prefer to believe he understands the content. He is round in the way of well-fed January babies and has Gary's eyes in the way that sometimes skips a generation — Ethan's eyes are mine, but Leo's are Gary's, that particular quiet gray that looks like thinking.

The fifth book is at manuscript stage. This is the part that is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying: the point at which it must stop being a thing I'm building and become a thing I'm submitting. My editor has read the first three chapters and used the word "propulsive," which was not a word I expected to receive in feedback on a book about seasonal cooking but which I'll accept. The working title is still working: "What Season Tastes Like." It does what I want it to do, which is to promise that the book is about more than recipes.

I've been cooking through winter in a way I want to record for the book — not elaborate cooking but the kind of cooking that winter actually asks for, which is mostly about patience and heat and deep flavors that develop over time. A beef shin braise that needed four hours and filled the house with something so warm and brown-smelling that Gary stood at the pot the entire last hour just to be near it. Leek soup, three times in a week, each time slightly different. Baked oatmeal with dried apricots and cardamom that I made on a Sunday and ate every morning for four days.

The book wants these recipes. Not the showpieces — the honest ones. The dishes you make because it's January and you're cold and you need something from the oven. I think I'm writing the book I've been trying to write for years. The sabbatical time Gary gave himself, watching it, reminded me of something I'd been forgetting: the value of working slowly, in layers, without urgency. The book is done when it's done. For now: the beef shin, the leek soup, the January light through the window.

Writing about winter cooking for the book has clarified something for me: the recipes worth keeping are the ones you return to without thinking, the ones that ask very little and give a lot back. While the beef shin and the leek soup were doing their slow, patient work on the stove, I kept reaching for something simpler alongside them — a batch of banana muffins I’d throw together Sunday morning and find myself grateful for every single day that week. They belong in the same conversation as all that January cooking: quiet, honest, and completely sure of themselves.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

3 very ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners, or grease each cup lightly with butter or nonstick spray.
Mash the bananas. In a large mixing bowl, mash the ripe bananas thoroughly with a fork until very few lumps remain — the riper the bananas, the sweeter and more flavorful your muffins will be.
Add the wet ingredients. Stir the melted butter into the mashed bananas until combined. Mix in the sugar, beaten egg, and vanilla extract.
Add the leavening. Sprinkle in the baking soda and salt and stir to incorporate evenly.
Fold in the flour. Add the flour all at once and fold gently with a rubber spatula until just combined. Stop as soon as no dry flour is visible — overmixing will make the muffins tough.
Fill and bake. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, until the tops are golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
Cool. Let muffins rest in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Eat warm or store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Banana Muffins — The Honest Baking January Actually Asks For