Chocolate on Noses

My favourite things about being an educated, comfortably well off, free citizen living in an affluent country are muffins.

Not least of all because of the child like joy they induce in Girlfriend, when she's prancing about the house sniffing the muffin scented air and counting down to our little treats popping out of the oven.

Muffins deserve their own tier on the Food Pyramid; "eat these for the soul".

This was a joint effort; GF melted the chocolate and ate the muffins, I mixed the other ingredients and licked the bowl ^_^

Chocolate Muffins with a Hint of Banana

2 generous cups of flour (I used half/half plain and wholemeal)
2 equally generous teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
2 tbl spoons melted butter
100g melted chocolate
1 cup of hot (but not boiling) milk
2 generous table spoons cocoa
1/4 cup agave syrup
brown sugar (optional, to taste)
banana, mashed (to taste - eg, 2 small bananas)

• Sift all the dry ingredients together.
• To melt chocolate, boil some water in a pot, and put another pot/bowl on top, with the chocolate inside. The boiling water will warm up the chocolate bowl and thus melt the chocolate, and you can control the heat so that it melts gradually and evenly without burning. Stir constantly while doing this.
• Combine all the wet ingredients with the dry, including the melted chocolate.
• Add the banana last. When I say "mashed", I mean with a folk - don't puree it into a liquid, it's meant to create lumpy banana bits throughout the muffin.
• Cook in a preheated oven for about 20 minutes at 180C (it took my muffins a few minutes longer than this).