Chocolate Cinnamon Muffins with Banana

     A few years ago, Starbucks served a Chocolate Cinnamon Bread that was to die for. One day, I picked up a recipe card on their counter. I've made it a few times, and it always comes out terrific. It's a very rich bread, almost a cake really. It's definitely not the most healthy recipe you could use, but it tastes so good!
     Yesterday, I was pondering the muffins I would make for the week, and I found this recipe in my box. I was standing next to a very ripe banana at the time. Here's goes my mind: Bananas and cinnamon are very good together...and so are bananas and chocolate. This can't go wrong.
     Since I was already going to add bananas into the recipe to try to make muffins, I thought I would change a couple of other things to make this a little bit healthier. The result was a a very good, cake like muffin with a delicious sugar crust. They turned out even better than I had hoped! We ended up with 24, so we froze about half of them to eat another week. I'll show you the recipe for a dozen. Enjoy!
     As a note, bananas can replace butter in baking measure for measure. Be sure that you want to taste the banana in your recipe though, since they do have a strong flavor. Applesauce can also be used to replace about half of the butter, but it does change the texture so be careful with that one.

Chocolate Banana Batter
1 mashed banana + enough butter(or applesauce) to = 1/2 cup
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tsp milled flax seed
2 Tbl water
 2/3 cup flour (take out 1Tbl/cup whole wheat flour)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 Tbl + 1tsp water
1/3 tsp vanilla
Cocoa-Spice Sugar Crust
1 Tbl + 1tsp sugar
1 Tbl + 1 tsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cocoa powder
pinch ginger
pinch cloves

• Cream banana, butter, and sugar on medium speed until light and creamy.
• Add egg, flax seed, and water. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
• Sift together the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. 
• In another bowl, whisk buttermilk, water, and vanilla. 
• On low speed, alternately add in the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture to the butter. Beat until just blended. 
• Divide batter evenly into muffin cups. Set aside while making the sugar crust.
• Whisk together sugars, cinnamon, cocoa, ginger, and cloves. 
• Sprinkle on the muffin batter.
• Bake @ 350* until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (about 20 minutes)

Linked up to
Muffin Monday