Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Cafe--Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Over the last eighteen months, I've presented information on storing good food that will make TEOTWAWKI much more pleasant.  And now, it appears TEOTWAWKI is here.  Though I have always enjoyed reading about pandemics, and how people and governments responded, and though I fully expected to experience at least one in my lifetime, it's just something else to find myself smack dab in the middle of one.
So now it's time to share some awesome recipes for Good Eats at the TEOTWAWKI Cafe.  Because that's where we're all eating for the next several months. 

For the first time ever, I made banana chocolate chip muffins for breakfast this past Tuesday morning.  We had three bananas that were fairly well spotted, and no one was going to eat them like that.  We prefer our bananas here with a fair touch of green to them, and absolutely no spots for fresh eating.

While I really wanted to make banana bars with cream cheese frosting, I figured muffins with a little less sugar and fat were a healthier choice.  Especially for breakfast.

So I picked out a recipe on Food.com and set to work using as much food storage as possible.

Original recipe	Food storage+fresh bananas	Food storage+dehydrated bananas
1 cup sugar	1 cup corn syrup	1 cup corn syrup
2 eggs	3 tablespoons powdered eggs	3 tablespoons powdered eggs
3 tablespoons milk	2 teaspoons dry milk	2 teaspoons dry milk
3 large bananas, mashed	3 large bananas, mashed	1 ½  cups dehydrated bananas, rehydrated in 1 cup water
1 teaspoon baking powder	1 teaspoon baking powder	1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda	1 teaspoon baking soda	1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour	2 cups flour	2 cups flour
1⁄2 cup melted butter	½ cup melted coconut oil	½ cup melted coconut oil
6 ounces chocolate chips	¾ cup chocolate chips	¾ cup chocolate chips
	3 tablespoons water	5 tablespoons water

It had been two weeks since my husband last hit the grocery store, several days before people started panicking here.  I think it's been nearly three weeks for me.  Because we're both high risk (he's a type-1 diabetic and I have no spleen), I think we're just home for the duration, for several weeks at least.  We don't need to go out.  We have plenty of food, though the fresh produce is being consumed quickly.  That will be missed.

Anyway, good food is important to morale.  So I thought I'd try these muffins, and I figured it would be a great time to see how well an all food storage recipe would work.

The first thing to substitute was corn syrup for the sugar.  Normally, all my life actually, I've been a pure cane sugar kind of person.  But I got a screaming deal on the corn syrup just last month--quart bottles for 16.6 cents.  I bought 24.  I wish I'd gotten them all.  Anyway, I've been using the corn syrup instead of honey in making bread and no one's noticed.  So I decided to use it today instead of sugar in the muffins.  Mostly because I have two open bottles and I only need one open bottle at most inside the kitchen.  But also just to try it out.  

The sugar and corn syrup substitute straight across measure for measure.  But the liquid has to be adjusted.  So I decided not to add any additional water for the powdered eggs, and only water for the milk, and that worked well.  And I used coconut oil for the butter.  The recipe said to bake for 20 minutes at 350.  Ours were still not even close to done, so we added about 8 minutes, and the muffins were perfect.  Very moist and tasty.

The next step was to try them with dehydrated bananas. I wasn't too sure they'd work very well.  I mean, I dehydrated those bananas eight years ago.  They were kind of brown and didn't look very appetizing.  They tasted just fine, however, and were still perfectly dehydrated.  I had used the food processor to slice them incredibly thin and dehydrated them until they were crispy.

And then I vacuumed sealed them in canning jars, packed the jars in boxes, and put the boxes under the bed.  And left them there.

So I wanted to try them in the banana chocolate chip recipe that worked so well on Tuesday.  I really didn't think they'd work well.  I didn't think they'd rehydrate well, and the fact that they were a bit brown I thought would be off-putting.

I rehydrated them in hot water.  It took about 15 minutes, but they rehydrated really well once Mr. Fork got involved in mashing them.  They worked perfectly well in the muffin batter, and I actually liked the color of these muffins better than the ones made with fresh bananas.  They were a nice, rich golden brown.  The texture was good, and they tasted pretty good, too.  The only thing that was missing was the strong banana aroma.  We all attributed that to the fact that they were dehydrated bananas.  Otherwise, everything was great.  And I'm really happy to have another way to use all those bananas I dehydrated so long ago.

If you decide to give the total food storage recipe a try, drain off the rehydrating water from the bananas and reserve the liquid to add to the batter later.  To make the muffins, combine the corn syrup, egg powder, and dry milk together and then stir in the mashed bananas.  Add the remaining dry ingredients and stir until just combined.  Stir in the oil and chocolate chips.  Pour into a greased or paper-lined muffin tin.  Bake for 28 minutes at 350 degrees.  Makes 18 muffins.