It has almost been a week since last weekend and I have never seen so much snow! Ever! Just when we thought it was all over, round two came along and snowed another 6” on top of the 28” we had already gotten. This just never happens around here! It wasn’t until last night when my street was finally plowed. Not by snow plows though, but by construction vehicles. Our entire area had to resort to construction vehicles because the snow plows couldn’t keep up with the highways. And yet, despite being kept in my house all week, I seem to be playing catch up. The first couple of days I relaxed, read, photographed, baked, and did nothing possibly related to work. Then I realized there was schoolwork to catch up on (ugh!), and I wound up getting a new job! So now everything is changing quickly again, just like it did after graduating, but I believe I’m ready for this next step. I hope that I am! So with adjusting to the changes, I kind of fell back with other things, such as sharing this new little number…

Some people say if something is good already, why change it? I think why not! My mom has this amazing banana chocolate bread recipe, which my entire family loves. It seriously disappears within a matter of a few days. So after the second day of being snowed in, I decided to go ahead and change up the recipe a bit to make some delicious muffins. Not like I was going anywhere that day!

Banana Walnut Muffins
Makes 12 lovely scrumpscious muffins the Muffin Man on Drury Lane would want to snatch up—sorry, I couldn’t resist!

• 1/2 c. of sugar
• 1/2 c. of brown sugar
• 1/2 c. or 1 stick of butter, room temperature
• 2 eggs
• 3 ripened bananas, mashed (should come to 1 c.)
• 1 tsp. of vanilla
• 2 c. of whole wheat flour (I used pastry, but all-purpose works as well)
• 1/2 tsp. of salt
• 1 tsp. of baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp. of baking powder
• 1 tsp. of cinnamon
• 1/2 c. of chopped walnuts

How to go about it…

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F degrees.
2. In a large bowl, blend together both of the sugars and butter. After these are mixed well, add in the eggs, mashed bananas, and vanilla. Blend these together well.
3. In a medium-sized bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Stir these together until they are well mixed.
4. Then you will add the dry ingredient mixture to the one in the large bowl, and mix these together well.
5. Afterwards, add in the chopped walnuts and stir those in until the entire mixture is well combined.
6. Use crisco, butter, whatever to grease the muffin pan. Take a 1/3 c. to scoop out the batter from the bowl, and place the batter in the muffin pan. A 1/3 c. is the perfect size and will give you exactly 12 muffins. No more, no less.

Then go ahead and place them in the oven, and bake them for around 20 minutes, or until they have turned a slight brown color and a tester comes out clean when inserted.

And this is the result…

I made these for breakfast that Sunday morning, after the snow had all settled, and the sun was shining through our windows. We hadn’t see the sun in quite awhile, even without it snowing. I couldn’t help but try to photograph with solely the sunlight. I actually never use the flash from my camera. It could just be from lack of experience, which is actually highly probable, but I just do not feel comfortable using it at all. Often times I do use the other lights in the house to try to balance everything out. This time I even left those out, and I kind of like how it turned out. It was difficult to edit, and I think that’s why I’m having a hard time appreciating it as much as I could. It was certainly worth a try though!

All in all, the muffins were a huge success. My parents were relieved that we were snowed in so that the muffins wouldn’t be leaving the house. I hope you all enjoy them as well!