Peanut Butter Cup Muffins

Okay, people said these were good. My dog loved me when I was making them because she got to lick the peanut buttery spoons clean. (She's such a good little helper.) I don't actually know what they taste like as I'd much rather eat my Nutella Muffins than these. Plus, I'm not so fond of these muffins for the sole reason that they gave me a horrible time when trying to photograph them. Yup, I don't know what it is about muffins (and breakfast foods and breads) that make them so hard to get a good picture of. Maybe it's that they are all brown and brown isn't the nicest colour. Or even that they are brown and I'm trying to take their picture next to a brown countertop, brown wood board, brown kitchen cupboards, brown walls. I think I've found why I can't get a decent picture. Then again, didn't I say that I don't really care if I have top notch photography (or even mediocre), so I shouldn't be fretting over this. This blog in the end is just for me to document what went right and wrong in the kitchen. Hey, if anyone else wants to read this then that's a bonus.

Yes, this is the same muffin recipe as the one from which I made my Banana Bran Nutella Muffins. In the process of trying to make these muffins dairy free, I think I also created something wonderful. You see, the first time I made these with peanut butter, I threw a couple chocolate chips on top as an after thought because hey, everyone that likes peanut butter seems to love peanut butter cups. Well the verdict quickly came in, they were good but didn't have enough chocolate. So here you have my updated Peanut Butter Cup Muffin Recipe. And yes, they still are pretty healthy (minus the odd chocolate chip or two now in them.)

One thing I did notice is that while you think peanut butter and nutella have a similar consistency, they actually bake up quite differently. With the nutella, I was able to swirl the extra spread on top of each muffin and it just stayed there nicely like I had placed it. The peanut butter on the other hand really melted and oozed over the top of the entire muffin (and looked really horrible and unappetizing). My recommendation: continue to place the nutella on top of the batter, but if you do peanut butter, place the blob of peanut butter on top of the batter and then with a toothpick try to flip the blob upside down so that the entire blob is coated in a bit of muffin batter. Does that make sense? If it doesn't, just push the blob into the depths of the muffin batter. When the peanut butter is encased by the batter it doesn't ooze away and so you bite into a peanut butter surprise.

The original recipe is still from Baking Bites.

Ingredients

Makes 14 Very Large Muffins (or 18 Regular Sized)

1 1/2 C. Whole Wheat Flour

1 C. Oat Bran (or Quick-Cooking Oatmeal)

2 Tbsp. Cocoa

1 Tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 Tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 Tsp. Salt

2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

3/4 C. Brown Sugar

2 Large Eggs

1 1/4 Tsp. Vanilla

1 C. Mashed Bananas (about 2 1/2 Bananas)

1/3 C. (heaping) Peanut Butter (+ additional for top ~ 1/3 C. extra)

1 C. Buttermilk

1 1/2 C. Chocolate Chips

Directions

~Preheat oven to 375 F.

~Line muffin tins with liners or grease.

~In a large bowl, combine flour, bran, cocoa, baking powder, soda and salt. Stir to combine.

~In a medium bowl, whisk together oil, sugar, eggs, banana, nutella and buttermilk until smooth.

~Poor wet mixture into dry, add chocolate chips and stir until just combined.

~Fill each muffin tin.

~Drop 1-2 tsp of the additional peanut butter onto top of each muffin, then either push the peanut butter into the middle of the batter or with a toothpick, flip the peanut butter blob around to get the top surface covered by muffin batter.

~Bake until toothpick comes out clean. Approximately 13-15 minutes for regular sized muffins or 15-17 for large muffins.

~Cool muffins in tin slightly then remove to cool completely on a cooling rack.

Enjoy

Bran Muffins You'll Actually Eat

What do you think when you hear the phrase Bran Muffin? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now, imagine two things 1) banana and 2) nutella. Have I got your attention yet? Oh yeah, and what if I told you next that they're still healthy (no butter and very little oil).

The funny thing about bran muffins is that the one single muffin I remember from my young childhood was Timmy's Oat Bran Date & Orange Muffin. I was probably only 5 or so but I recall that being my go to muffin when everyone went for coffee. I don't know now if I liked that taste of it, or just the name, but it's still pretty ironic that I liked bran as a 5 year old and then wouldn't touch it for many years after. I think it has always been that bran muffins always seem to have nuts or raisins in them, and I'm not found of raisins. Anyway, this recipe has not sign of raisins, or any other stereotypical bran muffin add in for that matter.

Okay, so these are the bran muffins that I most definitely will be adding to my make again muffin collection. They are great. They're moist and wonderful and have a hint of healthiness mixed in with a side of nutella. Unfortunately, nutella has dairy in it and so I halved this recipe (and still got 9 fair sized muffins) and made another type of dairy free muffins for the lactose intolerant among us. Next time, I might make the full batch but split it and add peanut butter to half and nutella to the rest, to save me having to make two batches one after the other. There's nothing worse than having to wash bowls you just used, to then go and dirty them again. The other thing I did for this recipe was I substituted some whole wheat flour for all purpose. Usually I split it and do half and half, but for this recipe I did 1 C. Whole Wheat Flour and 1/2 C. All Purpose. Eventually I'm trying to completely eliminate all purpose flour, but I don't want to make a complete swap right away on a recipe, because of the weight difference between the two flours. I'm also just realizing now as I type this that I swapped out the buttermilk for some vanilla soy milk with a bit of lemon juice added in to make it buttermilk-like. Oops, I guess I'm so used to not cooking with dairy milk, that even when other ingredients aren't dairy free, I still reach for the soy milk. Ha! I didn't even realize I did that until just now, some 4 days after the fact. I won't keep you from this recipe any longer.

Recipe from Baking Bites.

Ingredients

Makes 18 muffins

1 1/2 C. All Purpose Flour (or a combination of whole wheat and all purpose-see above comment)

1 C. Oat Bran or Quick-Cooking Oatmeal

1 Tbsp. Cocoa

1 Tsp. Baking Powder

1/2 Tsp. Baking Soda

1/2 Tsp. Salt

2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil.

3/4 C. Brown Sugar

2 Large Eggs

1 Tsp. Vanilla

1 C. Mashed Banana (about 2 bananas)

6 Tbsp. Nutella

1 C. Buttermilk

additional Nutella for topping

Directions

~Preheat oven to 375 F.

~Line muffin tins with liners or grease

~In a large bowl, combine flour, bran, cocoa, baking powder, soda and salt. Whisk to combine.

~In a medium bowl, whisk together oil, sugar, eggs, banana, nutella and buttermilk until smooth.

~Poor wet mixture into dry, and stir until just combined.

~Fill each muffin tin.

~Drop 1-2 tsp of nutella onto top of each muffin and swirl around with a toothpick (this didn't work so well for me. It really just clumped, but don't worry it ended up looking fine and still tasting good.)

~Bake until toothpick comes out clean from centre of muffin. Approximately 13-15 minutes.

~Cool muffins in tin slightly then remove to cool completely on a rack.

Enjoy

Oh yeah, I'm kind of happy with how these pictures turned out for once.