Weekend eats - Alex's banana muffin recipe

Here's the thing about me - I'm a terrible baker. It's just not my thing. So I'm afraid I'm not the mum who's always got a fresh cake in the tin ready to go. If that's even a thing any more. So it was with great excitement that our bare cake tin became filled this last weekend when Alex did some baking. He made a batch of banana oat muffins which were a) delicious, b) blimmin filling, and c) very easy to make, so I've been assured. One of these muffins was enough to fill each of us up until lunch for a busy morning, and they're made with lots of good stuff like oats, banana, and walnuts, so I'm sharing the recipe here as it's a real winner.

Here's what you need:
Dry ingredients
2 cups plain flour
1 cup porridge oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup (if you don't have any, you can use another 1/2 cup of brown sugar instead)
A handful of walnuts, roughly chopped (or any other nuts you fancy. Or indeed, no nuts either, if you're not a nut fan)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
Wet ingredients
1 1/2 cups mashed banana (which is roughly 3 bananas)
2 eggs (medium or whatever you have)
1/3 cup melted butter or margarine, unsalted
1 tsp vanilla essence or extract (not sure what the difference is. You can see why I'm not a baker!)

And here's what you need to do:
1. Pre-heat the oven to about 180ºC / 375ºF (we set ours to 200 because it's a bit rubbish and always slightly cooler than we need it to be)
2. Put all the dry ingredients in a big bowl and mix well
3. Put all the wet ingredients in a smaller bowl and mix well
4. Add the contents of the wet bowl to the big dry bowl and fold together gently
5. Spoon the mixture into muffin cases - it should make about 12 - and sprinkle some extra chopped walnuts on top for texture
6. Bake for 15-18 mins - start watching from about 12 mins. You're looking for nicely risen, golden muffins that aren't sticky in the middle when you pop a sharp knife in to check
7. Cool for as long as you can wait for, while the lovely smell wafts round the house, and then wolf one down.

They are particularly good for brekkie with coffee - we packed ours up with a thermos and headed to the beach to have ours. Enjoy!