Muffin Mondays

I love Fall. The colors, the fashions, the food, the holidays, all inspire me.  So today when I could finally feel its cool crisp fingers reaching out and tapping summer on the back to say "okay hot stuff, time to go", I got so excited I decided to celebrate by digging out an old favorite muffin recipe and baking.

Coincidentally, I've also been feeling like I needed a new challenge lately, so one thing led to another and before I knew it one spontaneous baking session morphed into my very first Fall Baking Challenge post.

So here it is.

The recipe:
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 walnuts coarsely chopped (I had none so they didn't make it into these muffins)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup canola oil
1 large egg
2 or 3 medium to large very ripe bananas, mashed
3 tablespoons buttermilk

Pre heat oven to 375 degrees F.
In a bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, walnuts, baking soda and salt. In another bowl whisk oil, egg, mashed bananas, and buttermilk until blended.  Add the dry ingredients and beat well until evenly combined and creamy.
Spoon the batter into each muffin cup up to the rim.
Bake until golden, dry and springy to touch or until a tooth pick comes out clean (20-25 minutes).
Cool on a wire rack.
Eat, enjoy, smile.

And here are the muffins:

Seriously, less than 2 hours after they came out of the oven and this is all that remained.

To be honest I chose to make these muffins because I noticed that our bananas were starting to speckle, so I thought it was probably best to kick off my challenge with these babies.  I added a handful of raspberries on a whim because I had them, and they looked delicious, and my muffin dough was looking sad and lonely without them, so in they went. 

There you have it, week one of my Fall baking challenge.  Hopefully, I can keep it going every Monday all season long...