Banana Muffins with a Crunch

I feel obligated to share only the most tasty muffin recipe that has ever graced my oven.  I'd love to be able to take credit for it but the true culinary genius behind the recipe is the loverly Ina Garten of The Barefoot Contessa...she is wonderful.  Her original recipe can be found here.

To be honest, I've never actually tried the original recipe.  I have this incurable urge to toy with recipes even if I haven't tried them before. You can imagine how fabulously horrible some of my experiments turn out.  I stumbled upon the recipe on the site Allrecipes.com and used the comments left by other bakers and a few of my own tweaks (to make it healthier, of course).  This is the final product: (for now...until I get bored and decide to change it :)

Banana Muffins with a Crunch

2 cups  all-purpose flour

1 cup  whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups  white sugar

2 tsp  baking powder

1 tsp  baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/4 cup  wheat bran

1 cup  melted butter, cooled

2 eggs, lightly beaten

3/4 cup  milk

2 tsp  vanilla

2 bananas, mashed

1 banana, chopped (opt)

1 cup  granola or quick oats

1 cup  chopped walnuts or pecans

1 cup shredded coconut

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Add wheat bran and stir to combine. Mix in melted butter.  In a separate bowl, mix together eggs, milk, vanilla and mashed bananas.  Add to other ingredients and stir.  Fold in chopped banana, granola, nuts and coconut.  Fill lined muffin cups three-quarters full  and bake for 25 minutes at 350F.

As I'm typing this out I can't help but think that I gotta sneak some chocolate chips in next time.  Let's be honest....there really isn't too many things that aren't made better by chocolate. Mmmmm nope...definitely not.  Oh and I'd like to try using applesauce in place of the melted butter.  I've heard it works really well but I've never tried.

Excuse the terrible photo.  Some day, over the rainbow, I dream of being rich and owning a really nice camera.....until then, my little free one will have to do.

If anyone tries my tasty little recipe with applesauce, pretty please let me know how it works out and how much you used? Love!