Banana nut muffins

• ½ cup infused butter

  Set your infusion strength above and this splits into infused and plain butter to hit whatever dose you want.

• 3very ripe bananas — skins mostly black, about 1¼ cups mashed
• ¾ cuplight brown sugar — packed
• 1large egg — room temperature
• 1 tspvanilla extract
• 1¾ cupsall-purpose flour
• 1 tspbaking soda
• ½ tspfine salt
• ½ tspground cinnamon
• ¾ cupwalnuts — toasted and roughly chopped

Method

1. 01

   Heat the oven to 425 °F and line a 12-cup muffin pan. Lining matters for dose evenness later — you will be filling by weight, and paper cups make that easy to check.

   425 °F

2. 02

   Melt the infused butter gently and let it cool until it is barely warm. Mashing it into cold banana while hot will cook the egg you add next.

3. 03

   Mash the bananas in a large bowl until only small lumps remain, then stir in the brown sugar, the egg, the vanilla and the cooled infused butter until the mixture is uniform. Streaks of butter floating on top mean streaks of dose.

4. 04

   Add the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon on top and fold with a spatula until the last dry flour disappears. Stop there. Overmixing develops gluten and gives you tough muffins with long tunnels through the middle.

5. 05

   Fold in the walnuts with two or three strokes. Toasting them first is worth the eight minutes — raw walnuts taste papery in a sweet batter.

6. 06

   Divide the batter into the 12 cups with a scoop, filling each about three-quarters full. Weigh them if you can: uneven cups are uneven doses, and the difference between the fullest and the emptiest is easy to miss by eye.

7. 07

   Bake at 425 °F for 5 minutes, then drop the oven to 350 °F without opening the door and bake until a pick comes out with a few moist crumbs. The initial blast sets the dome; the lower heat cooks the center without burning the edges.

   350 °F · 15 min

8. 08

   Cool in the pan 5 minutes, then move to a rack. Left in the pan they steam and the bottoms go soggy.

   5 min

9. 09

   Store in a covered container, and put a label on it. A muffin on the counter is the most casually grabbed food in a kitchen — keep these where children and unwitting guests will not reach for one.