Banana Marble Muffins

It's been a while, people have been visiting, Christmas and New Year's happened. Over the holidays I managed to destroy my camera, and the visitors are gone, so now's the time to sort through all the pictures I took when I was still photographing! For instance of some great baking I've done in the last few months, like my new favorite quick sweet treat: meet the Banana-Marble Bread...

It's really delicious, vegan, somewhat lower in fat, and inspired (as usual) by the Post Punk Kitchen. (I'd use all whole wheat pastry flour if I could get it here, instead I do 2/3 whole wheat and 1/3 cake flour.) That time, I made it into little cupcakes, for one of our lecturers who was leaving the next day -- see how nicely they work with little dollops of peanut butter baked in. And check out these electric field lines...

If you want to try it for yourself, here goes:

1 cup mashed very ripe banana
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/3 cup soy milk
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup pastry flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
6 tablespoons boiling water, divided
Peanut butter for filling (optional)

• Preheat oven to 180C. Get the water boiling.
• Mash up banana in a big bowl (~3 bananas).  Beat in the sugar, oil, milk and vanilla.
• Add flour, baking soda and salt and mix gently until just incorporated -- don't overmix! 
• Scoop one cup of the batter into a separate bowl. Mix the cocoa with 3Tbs of boiling water in a small cup. Add that chocolate mixture to the separate batter, stir it all together.
• Also add 3 tablespoons of boiling water to the original batter, and mix the batter just until relatively smooth.
• Now! Grease a 6-muffin-pan (or an 8"x4" loaf pan, or 12 cupcakes). Scoop alternating 1/4 (or 1/2, for the loaf) cupfuls of light and dark batter into the pan, and then give it a swirl with a fork. The motion should be more vertical than horizontal, because you want the spirals to be visible in the crossection of your result... you know what I mean.
• If using PB, drop a tsp full in the middle of each muffin and push down just a little bit.
• Bake for 18 minutes in the muffin-, 55 minutes in the loaf case. When a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean, it's done! Let cool, enjoy.