I originally planned to make these peanut butter banana chocolate chip muffins from Crepes of Wrath; however, I forgot to buy bananas last week, and it is absolutely essential to let the bananas ripen nearly to the point of being black before you bake with them. As a result, I’m making the slightly less complicated peanut butter and chocolate chip muffins from Baking Bites.
Apart from the chocolate chips, these muffins are made with items that should already be in your pantry; thus, it’s likely that your only extra expense will be for chocolate chips (bittersweet, semisweet, milk or dark–whichever you please, which is always a plus when you’re baking on a budget.
If you prefer not to eat too much sugar or can’t quite handle the sweetness of chocolate in the morning, feel free to replace them with something else (perhaps a dollop of jam or jelly in the middle) or omit them altogether. Your choice.
For this recipe, you’ll need 2 1/4 cups flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2/3 cup packed brown sugar, 6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled, 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1 cup milk, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup chocolate chips and 1/2 cup jam or jelly of your choice.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar; set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together the butter, peanut butter, milk and eggs. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.
If you are making the chocolate chip muffins, simply fold in the chocolate chips and portion out the batter as usual into the muffin tin.
If you are making the PBJ muffins, first you are going to want to fill the muffin tins about halfway with the batter. Then add a spoonful (anywhere from a few teaspoons to a heaping tablespoon) of jam or jelly, and top it off with a large dollop of the batter. When these bake up, they’ll have a lovely ribbon of jam across the top.
The baking time for both of these variations is around 20 minutes. As I’ve mentioned before, my decrepit oven does not offer the most reliable standard for cooking time.