Saving a banana from certain doom

Mike and I love fresh produce and go through our fair share of fruits and veggies each day. We're pretty good about eating everything we buy before it goes bad, but once in a while we buy one too many bananas and before you know it, it's turning brown.

I hate to let food go to waste, so I knew I had a short window of opportunity where I could use it to bake before it turned bad. I remembered these easy banana nut muffins that I made a few months ago. Not only are they fast and easy, but they also only require one banana, which was exactly what I needed to use up.

I read back over my post, as well as the comments, and my friend Kelly commented that she made them and added in some chocolate chips. She said they were a hit in her office, so I decided to take her advice and added in about 2/3 cup of mini-semisweet chocolate chips. I also added in about 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, which is a little more than the recipe calls for. But since my banana was on the smaller side, I figured the extra nuts and chocolate chips could beef it up a little.

Branching out with bananas

I've baked a lot of cookies lately. Macaroons, frosted red velvet cookies, baptism cookies. Cookies are my favorite thing to bake, but on Sunday, I was itching to do something different.
"Can I bake something for your co-workers?" I yelled out to Mike from the kitchen, as I thumbed through my stack of cookbooks.
"Sure!"
"What do they like?"
"Everything!"
Everything. Perfect. My kind of people.
After much page-flipping, a recipe finally caught my eye. Banana Nut Muffins.
Easy to transport to the office, easy to grab and take to your desk. The quintessential baked snack for those who start their day at 8 a.m.
All you do is mash up one banana (I used a potato masher):

Mix the batter. Add nuts (I used walnuts):

Fill up some muffin cups (note the little chunks of banana in the batter... yum!):

And voila! Mike tells me they were a hit.

Ingredients:
1 banana or spice cake mix
2 eggs
1 cup water
1/3 cup chopped nuts
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 medium banana, mashed

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour muffin pan or use muffin paper cups. Mix together cake mix, eggs, water, nuts, oil and banana in a large bowl until well blended. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full with batter.
Bake 20-25 minutes.

Source: 101 Things To Do With A Cake Mix (Stephanie Ashcraft)