Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins with Cinnamon Streusel.

These muffins are what happen when you have flavor and texture A.D.D.  Like me.

While a plain banana muffin is typically pretty standard in your corner bakery, I upped the ante by both stuffing AND topping the breakfast staple with a cinnamon-walnut-chocolate-chip-streusel.

What was that again? Cinnamon Walnut Chocolate Chip Streusel. 

“Plain” is not a word in my muffin vocabulary.

Like a proper foodie, the first and only thing I thought of after getting over a stomach bug was… what the heck will I finally EAT?  I had been dreaming about my first real meal for days.

After living on saltines and peanut butter, my stomach, mind, and sanity were screaming for some flavor.  Lots of stuff coming from every different textural angle.  It had been a long, tortuous week living in the bland world (how do people eat plain foods? I don’t understand!), I needed a splurge.

A SERIOUS splurge.  Preferably with chocolate. And preferably first thing in the morning.

Done and done.

Batten down the hatches folks – with these muffins, you will NOT be able to stop eating one after another.

Here’s how all the decadence starts.  Underneath all that steusel, you’ll find a banana muffin that’s hardly innocent. Each bite is impeccably buttery and delicate. If baked plain, these banana muffins will hold their own.  Starting as a batter made with 3 large bananas and creamed butter, these muffins are comparable to a light and fluffy banana bread.  Not dense by any means, but surely packed with buttery banana flavor.

The spot-on banana muffin will taste like a treat even without all that streusel!

The streusel, made from brown sugar, chocolate chips, chopped walnuts, and loads of cinnamon, is completely two-fold.  You see, it  isn’t merely a streusel topping.  It’s a steusel swirl as well.

I layered a tablespoon of the sugared glory in between the muffin batter AND on top right before baking.  The cinnamon and brown sugar leave a crusty sweet coating on top that seeps down into the batter, swirling through the fluffy banana interior.

The chocolate chips hiding inside expand and pop, creating melty chocolate pockets in each bite.  The walnuts give the whole party some crunchy texture and pair wonderfully with the cinnamon and banana.

Finding the right balance of streusel-to-muffin is much harder than it seems!  I wanted enough chocolate to make these muffins taste like dessert but at the same time, I didn’t want to overpower the banana flavor.  I love me some chocolate and banana, but chocolate can easily steal the spotlight over practically any other ingredient it’s paired with.  A mere 3/4 cup of chocolate chips spread over 16 muffins did the trick to save the banana flavor.

I also didn’t want the muffins to be overloaded with actual sugar.  Rather, I wanted the muffins to obtain their sweetness from the bananas, cinnamon, and chocolate chips.

With only 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup sugar in the batter and streusel respectively, I was still able to create dessert-like muffins– gathering their sweetness from the other ingredients in the recipe.

Feel free to use less or more sugar in either the muffin batter or in the streusel.

Baked tall using my sky-high muffin tips, I found that a bakery sized dessert muffin overloaded with texture, chocolate, and a whole lotta banana flavor was the perfect “first” meal after being ill.

And the perfect snack. And running-fuel. And dessert.

You won’t be able to stop either!

I adapted this recipe from my friend Amy’s banana coffee cake recipe.

Try baking this batter in a 8×8 baking pan at 350F degrees for 35 minutes OR until the cake is lightly golden brown and set in the center.

Decadent breakfasts are the best kind, no?

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Tagged as: bananas, brown sugar, chocolate chips, cinnamon, eggs, Muffin Recipes, walnuts, white sugar, yogurt