Easy Banana Crumb Muffins

2020 is a strange one, isn’t it?

We’ve got just about a quarter of the year left and we’ve already dealt with impeachment, a global pandemic, controversy over said global pandemic, hurricanes, wildfires, major celebrity deaths, political upheaval, racial tensions, murder hornets, embarrassingly wicked Presidential debates, and, most recently, kids going back to school, and (you guessed it) controversy over said kids going back to school. And how.

I don’t think you need me to tell you how this is making us all feel, right? It’s apparent. We’re all angry. Disgruntled. Anxious. Frustrated. Stressed. And most of all, trying to find our footing.

At least that’s where I am.

The pandemic and subsequent quarantine were a weird time for all of us emotionally. I can’t begin to assume that I can nail down your emotional roller coaster, so I’ll just walk you through mine.

In the beginning, there was disbelief. Like, “oh s*** is this really happening?” disbelief. It was too big and too enormous and too scary for us to wrap our heads around. So instead, we hoarded toilet paper, drank heavily, and promised ourselves we would use this time to better ourselves. There was a tremendous amount of optimism at that time. Encouraging messages could be found on sidewalks across the nation, ads with oddly uniform melodic background music and nearly identical hopeful messages (we’re in this together, while apart, blah, blah, blah) played at every commercial break. Celebrities organized benefit concerts. We rallied behind frontline medical workers and local businesses who were suffering. There was a tremendous sense of community and people vowed to spend more time with their families. It was kind of nice, actually.

But here we are, six months later, and even though we did all of these things they told us would make it better and some of them seemed to work, we’re in a much worse place. Mentally. At the very least.

For me personally, I’ll say that my emotional roller coaster always had a destination, a hard-stop-return-to-normalcy stopping point. Yes, the world might still be going crazy and people might still be losing their ever-loving minds about the election (please vote) and all the things, but my personal world would be right when the kids go back to school. That’s what it was going to take. I was sure of it.

Now, before I sound like a bad mother, I want to preface this with the notion that it is NOT because I wanted them out of my hair or needed a babysitter or any such thing. Sure, after six months, there was some truth to the former (the latter doesn’t work because my kids are old enough to stay home alone), but that really wasn’t why this was my normalcy benchmark.

I really wanted them back in school because in my feeble little mind, once they were there all would return to normal in our otherwise chaotic world. When schools closed, way back in March, that was the end of my life as I knew it. So clearly, putting them back in that space, the one that apparently kept us hanging on by a thread to normal life, all would right itself back on its axis.

Yet here we are, the kids back in school for three weeks now and I’m not sure my mind has caught up yet.

I’m still kind of stuck in limbo, afraid to plant my flag in the solid earth and proclaim this “normal.” I’m still caught up in the chaos of the world, which seems to be getting worse, not better. Nothing feels normal.

NOTHING.

So sending my kids to school feels kind of like a game of pretend. If I had to examine it deeper, I’d say that the world feels so crazy that sending them to school and expecting anything to return to normal feels like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. Add to that this feeling of impending doom as we wait each day, expecting to get the email that schools are closing again or worse, that our kid needs to quarantine for 14 days because of known exposure, and you have a recipe for incredible mental stress.

I realize now that putting my hopes for normalcy in the hands of a tenuous event (the return to school) was a risky venture, at best. If quarantine has taught us anything it’s that putting our hopes in anything, yes, even the sanctity of church services, professional sports or any other event that has never ever been canceled or paused until 2020, is an adventure in recklessness.

Maybe the reason I’m feeling so off-kilter is that my hopes were set on the wrong thing.

What I’m learning, through these weird and hazy days of 2020, is that unless I’m firmly (and I mean rock-solid firm) planted in the only thing that doesn’t change and hasn’t changed for, well, ever, I’m in dangerous territory. When I’m holding tight to the transient things of this world–school schedules, governments, people–I’m going to get let down, lost and be wide open to attack. Because these things are failable. They’re not permanent. Even if we want to make them thus. They’re just not.

Regardless of where you stand with God, whether you believe or not or feel like you’re too far gone for Him to love you (trust me, you’re not), the fact remains that He is the first and the last. Or, I’ll go more fact-based than that for the doubters, His words, the very Bible we read, have withstood the test of time. When you open that book, you’re reading words that were written thousands of years ago about people who are now dust and ash, yet they still stand firm. And, furthermore, they will exist long after you’re gone and you are dust. They are firm and solid.

They are TRUTH that has stood the test of time. They are permanent.

And the Bible, these words of God and about God, are different than you might expect if your only experience with God is through Christians, what with our hypocrisy, ridiculousness and Christianese that makes you cringe. Take out our human over-complication and its message is quite simple, really.

 

God is God. We are not.

He loves us even though we mess up, rebel and basically make giant disasters of our lives from time to time.

He wants us to obey and love Him and love one another, yet He’s infinitely patient when we do not.

And despite all of this–our fallibility & our mess–He still found a way to bail us out of the messes we get ourselves into. That way is Jesus.

Having a relationship with God has nothing to do with church or perfection or living the right way and judging others because you don’t believe God thinks they are. {Just love people. Let God do the rest, people. Seriously.} It has everything to do with releasing all of these things and saying:

“Hey, I can’t do this. But you can. I trust you. And thanks.”

So when I’m looking around at the world or one specific event hoping it will right me back to center or give me a sense of peace, I’m on the wrong track. Because, as we’ve learned over and over this year, all of the things we have counted on are subject to change. ALL OF THE THINGS. But when I am able to count on the one thing that hasn’t changed for thousands of years before me and will continue long after, I’m believing in something bigger than me, bigger than a virus, bigger than one country. I’m putting my faith in the author of it all.

And that’s the only real way I’m going to feel sturdy enough to take the next step. And then the next one.

So, dear friends, even though 2020 has been a giant raging dumpster fire, take heart. There is more than what we see right now going on. There is something bigger than this teeny tiny virus and the havoc it’s wreaked. There is life and in the full, you just have to trust a little bit that there’s something sturdier than the shaky ground we’re currently standing on. And try with every single ounce of your might to cling to that certainty. Because trust me, even when we’ve lit the match and are burning down our own world, God is still clinging to us.

Banana Crumb Muffins

Ahhhhh…nothing like a little convo about dumpster fires and Coronavirus to peak the appetite. AMIRIGHT?

Anyway, in my world when things are a little askew you can 100% find me in the kitchen baking up a storm. It soothes my soul and gives my idle hands something to do. Because we all know those are the devil’s workshop.

Yet I digress.

These Easy Banana Crumb Muffins are the product of some of my most stressed out baking sessions. If you know me, I’m the master of banana baking. Mostly because as a family we are masters at letting bananas rot, which is a conversation for another day. I love a good banana bread or muffin as much as the next girl, but I was feeling antsy and wanted to change up my go-to recipe with chocolate chips yet knew I needed a hook, something to make it different.

And these Banana Crumb Muffins were born.

Topped with a sweet and crumbly brown sugar-based topping, these sweet and light muffins are the perfect easy breakfast or brunch. They’re deceptively easy, a dump and stir type recipe even the worst baker can handle, and the topping sends them over the top.

A few quick notes, I always bring my cold items to room temp before baking. I feel it helps them incorporate with each other better. If you’ve got the time to do this, I highly recommend it. You might have leftover crumb topping depending on how much you use. You can either eat straight from the bowl like some people we know (read: me), or dump it. And finally, I liked these best the second day, heated up for a quick 10 seconds in the microwave. Something about resting helped the flavor deepen. But don’t worry, they’re really delicious on day one, too. You can trust me on that.

Peace, love and firm foundations,
Meg

Easy Banana Crumb Muffins

October 2, 2020

Print This

By: Meaghan Dawson

Ingredients

• 3 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/4 cup melted butter, slightly cooled
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• Crumb Topping:
• 1/2 cup butter, softened to room temp
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 flour

Directions

• Step 1 Preheat oven to 350 and line a muffin tin with liners.
• Step 2 In a large bowl combine bananas and butter, stirring well.
• Step 3 Add sour cream, egg, sugar, and vanilla. Stirring well with a whisk to combine.
• Step 4 Sprinkle all dry ingredients on top (flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon).
• Step 5 Stir until just combined but do not overmix.
• Step 6 Drop by ice cream scoop into muffin tins, filling about 2/3 of the way.
• Step 7 Set aside.
• Step 8 In a small bowl mix all crumb toppings together with a fork. The texture should resemble clumpy sand.
• Step 9 Spoon on top of each muffin, careful to not let any drop on the sides of the tin if possible.
• Step 10 Bake for 25-30 minutes OR until browned and cooked through (start checking at 20).
• Step 11 Great served warm.

Sharing is Caring

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Stumbleupon

Yummly