Cream Cheese Banana Nut Muffins

One of my favorite uses for overripe bananas is to make banana nut muffins. Fact: sometimes I purposely let our bananas get overripe just so that I can make muffins with them. This week I tried the best banana nut muffin recipe EVER! Its a moist banana nut muffin with a cream cheese filling and oh did I mentioned they’re delicious?

I slightly adapted this recipe from the May 2012 issue of Food Network magazine who adapted the recipe from a restaurant, Gary Danko, in San Francisco. I will say that the recipe is a little time consuming because you have to wash out your mixer a few times. Unless of course you have multiple kitchen aid mixers and in that case I’m totally jealous of you. :) But I promise all the work will be worth it in the end!

Banana nut muffins with cream cheese

For the muffins:

1 1/2 cups plus 3 tbsp cake flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 stick plus 2 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup plus 6 tbsp sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 large eggs, room temperature

3 ripe banana, mashed

2/3 cup walnuts, chopped

For the cream cheese mouse filling:

8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 large egg whites, at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degree; line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.

2. Begin by making the filling: beat the cream cheese and vanilla extract with the paddle attachment on medium speed until smooth; transfer to a bowl. Clean out the mixer then beat the egg whites with the whisk attachment for about a minute. Gradually add the sugar, then increase the mixer speed to high for about 3 minutes. Add half of the cream cheese mixture and beat until combined. Add the remaining half of your cream cheese mixture and beat until smooth. Put filling in a pastry bag with a large round tip. If you don’t have a tip available snipping 1 inch off the bottom of a disposable pastry bag works fine. Clean out the mixer.

3. For the muffins: Sift flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Beat butter, sugar, and vanilla with the paddle attachment on medium speed for about 5 minutes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add in mashed bananas until well combined. Slowly add half of the flour mixture and beat on low speed. Add renaming flour mixture until combined. Stir in walnuts.

4. Fill muffin pan about 1/2 way full. Insert the pastry tip (or bag) halfway into the batter and pipe about 1 teaspoon of filling in each muffin. Bake for about 20-30 minutes minutes, until the a toothpick inserted in the muffin (not filling) comes out clean. Transfer to a rack to cool for 15 minutes. Makes 24 muffins.