Irish Soda Bread Muffins

In conjunction with St. Patrick Day, i tried this Irish Soda Bread Muffins. 

While i don't know much 'bout St. Patrick Day, it seems that many people celebrate it by wearing green and preparing green foods.  Since i don't have mints or pistachio that many Irish baking recipe called for, i did this most easier and quick Irish Soda Bread Muffins instead.  Like the idea of simply mix the dry and wet ingredients together in a bowl with spatula instead of using a stand/electronic mixer.  So simple.

I've added two ripe mashed bananas into the recipe as do not wish to waste the bananas that were turning brown.  Banana bread or banana muffins is always one of my favorite, hence instead of having the ripe bananas end up in the bin, i thought it would be a good way to use it by adding it to this Irish Soda Bread Muffins.  It might not be the original Irish Soda Bread Muffins then, but most importantly, it turned out great still and is yummy!

Ingredients:

• 305g all purpose flour
• 115g white sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk (i substitute it with 1TBSP lemon juice + 220ml milk)
• 1/4 cup butter, melted 
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 60g raisins
• 1 tsp caraway seeds (i left this out)
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed (added to the recipe)

Steps:

1. Melt the butter in a pot under low heat, set aside to let cool
2. Preheat oven to 400F/205C 
3. Line a 12 cup muffin pans with paper liner or spray the muffin cups with a vegetable spray 
4. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda
5. In another bowl, beat the egg.  Then beat in the buttermilk, butter, oil and mashed banana. 
6. Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients just until moistened
7. Fold in the raisins
8. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 Muffin cups  Sprinkle with 1 TBSP white sugar
9. Place in the oven and bake for 15mins or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean
10. Cool for 5mins before removing from pan to wire rack
11. Serve warm

Notes:

• To substitute 1 cup buttermilk with milk & lemon juice, place a TBSP of lemon juice in a liquid measuring  cup, add enough milk to bring the liquid up to the one-cup line.  Stir and let sit for 10mins.  After 10min, the milk is both acidic and curdled.