Salted Caramel Banana Muffins

Salted caramel anything, I'll eat it. My favorite drink at Starbucks is a salted caramel hot chocolate. I love salted caramel chocolate. I would try salted caramel cockroaches. Okay, maybe not quite cockroaches. But, salted caramel gets me almost every time, which is why I just had to make these salted caramel banana muffins I pinned after my Grammy gave me some bananas gone brown.

I'll cut to the chase.

Salted Caramel Banana Muffins 12 muffins
from Add A Pinch
2 cups flour (I used all-purpose)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 bananas, overly ripe
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup walnuts (optional)
5 ounces caramel candies
1 Tablespoon heavy cream
sea salt, sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 and prep muffin tin with liners or lightly buttered.

Sift dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) into a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, cream bananas and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time until creamy. Then, add melted butter, mixing until well combined. Finally, add vanilla.

Add dry ingredients in slowly, until just combined. Add walnuts if desired. Be very careful not to over mix or your muffins will be dry.

Divide batter among muffin cups. I filled my muffins cups nearly full because that was how much batter there was, which worked out perfectly because when you add the caramel on top, they do not rise very much.

Prepare the caramel by melting the caramels and heavy cream in a microwave safe bowl, until caramels just begin to melt. Remove from microwave and stir until smooth. Add sprinkling of sea salt and stir.

Spoon 1 teaspoon or a little more onto the top center of each cup. It's okay if it doesn't stay perfectly in the middle. The original recipe says to make a little indentation with the back of the spoon in the center of each cup to fill with caramel. I think my batter was a little thinner than hers because it wouldn't hold the indentations. Turns out, it doesn't matter because it works just fine to make a blob on top of the batter.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven  and allow to cool for at least 3 minutes before removing from pan. Make sure you wait longer than you think before biting into one of these as the caramel in the middle can burn your tongue. Or lip. Or roof of mouth. Not that I have had that experience or anything like that.

The caramel glazes over the top as you can see above, and then forms this wonderful little pocket in the middle of the muffin. Mmmmm mmm.

Oh salted caramel, you are so right. My super talented friend Michelle shares my affinity for salted caramel. In fact, neither of us being coffee people - gasp! I know - she is the one who turned me on to the salted caramel hot chocolates from Starbucks. She has a couple delicious salted caramel recipes on her blog you'll want to try if you love salted caramel like us: Salted Caramel Popcorn or Salted Caramel Chocolate Pie or Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies. Those recipes are probably more reliable than my silly attempt at Salted Caramel Fudge this past winter. Oye.

I sure hope it's not too long until we meet again salted caramel...


This post is linked up to some of the parties listed under my Show & Tell tab at the top of the page.