Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Peanut Butter Banana Nutter Muffins

This recipe came out of frustration. I had saved two bananas so that they could ripen for me to make some muffins with. When I figured they were ripe enough I went to the net looking for a recipe. I kept running into a couple of problems though. First off most of the recipes I found needed more bananas than I had. If it called for just two bananas it also called for milk which I was out of. So I thought for a while about what I could do. I remembered a basic muffin recipe I had come up with a while back and figured I could tweak it enough to suit my needs for this batch of muffins. I figured that peanut butter would be as dense as bananas so I got the jar out. The peanut butter is a stronger flavor at first but then the banana starts to come through and it winds up tasting like a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

Ingredients:
2 ripe bananas mashed
1/2 a cup of peanut butter
1/2 a cup of granulated sugar
5 tbsps of butter softened
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 egg lightly beaten
1 1/2 cup of flour
1 tsp each of baking powder and baking soda
1/2 tsp of salt
1/2 to 2/3 of a cup of chopped nuts (I used walnuts but peanuts or pecans would be good too)
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (my oven runs a little hot so I usually back off from the heat. If your oven is a little cold you might wanna go for 375) grease 12 muffin cups or line them with paper. Start off by thoroughly mixing the banana, vanilla and peanut butter then add in the egg butter and sugar. Mix it until it is really well combined. Next combine all of the dry ingredients together and mix them well. Add the dry to the wet and mix it just until it is combined. It makes a thick batter and it kinda looks like whipped peanut butter. Now put an even amount of the batter in the cups and bake for about 20 minutes. Baking time will vary but you will know it is done if when you put a toothpick in the center it comes out clean. Yields 12 muffins.