Gluten Free Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

This recipe is adapted to gluten free from this one. Which means I didn't do anything very inventive besides lower the amount sweet stuff and put in the right amount of xanthan gum.

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups your favorite gluten free flour
• 7/8 tsp. xanthan gum
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
  
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt --> important for acidity (some people report good results when using milk, but I still think yogurt is important in this recipe)
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1+ cup mashed ripe bananas
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine first six ingredients in a bowl. In a separate large bowl, combine the egg, oil, yogurt, and vanilla. Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients and fold over until just combined -- there can still be dry bits of flour in it, and that's fine.

Anyway, fold in the mashed bananas and chocolate chips. Grease muffin tins and fill each cup no more than 3/4 full (depending on how much of a muffin top you want to see in the finished product). Bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool for a little bit before removing from tins, and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Fun fact: In general, you don't want to overmix muffins or you'll have a tunneling problem: dense muffins with a bunch of holes in them from the air bubbles. (i.e. Use the muffin method, and Alton Brown fans, you know what that means.) But tunneling is created by gluten, a protein composite you don't want to over-excite if you don't want your muffins tasting like bubble gum. Our flour had no gluten to begin with, though, so maybe the muffin method is not as important in gluten-free baking. Does anyone actually know if this is true?