A few weeks ago, when Hurricane Irene was barreling toward the Eastern seaboard (aka. My Home), New York City was in a panic.  Store shelves were stripped bare, batteries had never been worth more and people were walking around with more cash in their wallets than they had since the early 90s.  Like most other urbanites, I went to stock up.  Load our pantry with necessities.  Non-perishable items to live off of if the worst happened and we were stranded for days on end.  I came home with a whole chicken and a bunch of fresh basil.  Oops.

Of course, that chicken turned into an amazing one-pot meal because I was certain that if the world was going to end we weren’t going to go out hungry.  Then, in a fit of panic upon realizing that I didn’t have the proper necessities to survive Storm-aggedon, I decided it was time for Emergency Cookies.  Cookies to get you through a hurricane tropical storm.  Cookies to soothe the nerve-wracked soul but healthy enough to keep you in your skinny jeans if the world doesn’t end.

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Despite being a fairly frequent banana eater, I inevitably end up with the last few bananas in the batch turning brown before I’d planned.  It’s a safe bet to assume there are at least a few brown (ok, black) bananas hanging out in my fridge at any given time.  I usually throw them into a batch of homemade granola bars or whip up some whole wheat banana bread or muffins, but sometimes you feel the urge to be a little bad.  Something tells you it’s time to pull out the gobs of butter, the heaps of powdered sugar (gasp!) and good ‘ol fashioned white flour.

A moist, spiced banana cupcake topped with a cinnamon-spiked cream cheese frosting is the perfect solution.  You don’t have to tell anyone that the cake is spiked with dark rum or that the frosting is so melt-in-your-mouth delicious that you had several spoonfuls just to test it’s flavor.  We get it.  Some days are just made for being bad.

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Recently, I’ve been on a quest to eliminate processed sweeteners from my diet.  Say goodbye to Splenda, Truvia, and good ‘ol fashioned granulated white sugar.  Sounds a little hippy, to be sure, but I figured that cutting out processed sugar as much as possible can’t be a bad thing.  Since this quest isn’t managing to quiet my incessant sweet tooth, this has let me on a constant search for sweetening replacements in baked goods.  Hello, honey-sweetened baked goods!

This uber-moist banana bread is made with whole-wheat pastry flour, sweetened with honey and all starts with an olive oil base.  Studded with toasted walnuts and wild blueberries this loaf packs a subtle nutty, banana flavor.  With a tangy sweetness from the honey, this moist quick bread is sure to become a family favorite in no time.

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I may be the only person who buys bananas with the intention of letting them turn brown and squishy.  To me, a banana is nothing more than the jumping off point for moist, nutty loaves of banana bread.  Heaping piles of banana muffins.  Sweet roasted banana cakes.  This whole wheat banana muffin is a portable, travel-sized companion that packs all the punch of it’s larger banana bread alter-ego.

Whole wheat flour works perfectly with banana breads and muffins.  It basically acts like a shot in the arm to the already nutty flavor.  This recipe is especially moist thanks to the use of yogurt in the place of milk.  The toasted walnuts create a sweet level of depth to this unbelievably simple recipe.  These muffins are so easy to make that you’ll probably end up trying to speed up the ripening process so that your bananas go bad faster (Hint: Put them in a paper bag with an apple. Does the trick every time.).

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