Mocha Chocolate Coconut Banana (Mo Cho Co Ba) Muffins Recipe

If you’re looking for a fun, new muffin recipe to try, one that has unique ingredients and also offers health benefits, then look no further. Mocha Chocolate Coconut Banana Muffins (Mo Cho Co Ba for short) are the answer to your next baking adventure.

The fun in making these muffins is in the ingredients, and in the excitement over when they are finally pulled from the oven and enjoyed with family in front of a warm, toasty fire on a cool fall evening.

First, let’s take a quick look at the top ingredients that make these muffins so tasty, and what makes them healthy.

Banana

To be honest, the banana is often taken for granted. We can buy them year-round, and usually, they are so inexpensive; we don’t give them much thought. But bananas are loaded with healthy benefits for our bodies. Here are a few of those:

Aids Digestion. A medium-sized banana has 3.1 grams of fiber, which aids our digestive health.
Reduces Damage of Free Radicals. Bananas contain antioxidants, including catechins and dopamine, which help reduce damage caused by free radicals.
Supports the Heart. Bananas support the heart by providing potassium (which lowers blood pressure) and magnesium.
Helps Maintain Blood Sugar Levels.
Aids in Kidney Health.
Provides Vitamin C and Vitamin B6.

And to top it off, bananas taste good, even by themselves. So, imagine what they can do in a recipe!

Coconut

Coconut is a healthy treat. For this recipe, we will be using both coconut oil and shredded coconut, so there will be a lot of health benefits to be had, not to mention added flavor.

Coconut has been heralded as a superfood. It contains healthy fatty acids, which have a plethora of health benefits. These include:

Raises our good (HDL) cholesterol, which helps reduce the risk of heart disease.
Provides Antimicrobial effects, killing off viruses, bacteria, and fungi in the body.
Aids in weight loss, by pushing the body to burn fat and reducing appetite. It also has been found to burn abdominal fat specifically, which is often linked to chronic diseases.

Chocolate

Dark chocolate is well known for its healthy properties, but for this recipe, we will be using cocoa powder. So, let’s talk about that specifically.

Where does Cocoa powder come from exactly? It all starts with cacao beans. Once picked and fermented, cacao beans are dried, roasted, and ground down into a paste. From this paste, the cocoa butter is then extracted, leaving behind the dry cocoa powder.

Health benefits of cocoa powder include:

Low calorie, high fiber content
Contains important minerals (iron, zinc, magnesium, and manganese).
Includes plant-based flavonoids (catechin and epicatechin), which assist in preventing inflammation, increasing blood flow, and lowering blood pressure.
Also includes phytonutrients, which may protect against such chronic diseases as diabetes, some cancers, and heart disease.
May also act as an antidepressant.

Mocha

Many of us have heard about Caffe Mochas, which are the yummy beverages made of a combination of espresso coffee, chocolate, and steamed milk. But mocha alone is a type of high-quality coffee which comes from, what else, a special coffee bean.

Overall, coffee contains several health benefits, including:

Reduces risk of heart disease
Protects the liver
Lowers risk of developing Type 2 diabetes
Reduces risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson Disease

For this particular recipe, we will be adding espresso powder. This is a dark, intense, and highly concentrated instant coffee. Actually, it’s more of a crystal than a powder.

To make this crystal-like powder, the espresso beans are brewed. The next step is to grind them, followed by drying them. These used grounds are then crushed even more until they are a fine powder.

In addition to the benefits above, espresso powder has been shown to increase attention span and has been found to reduce anxiety. When combined with chocolate, it may also help to strengthen memory.

Now that we know the health benefits of the four main ingredients, it’s time to move on to the delicious recipe itself.