A friend gave us a muffin recipe that MessyMom adapted to our tastes a few years ago. I’m at the point where I’ll just throw stuff into these to try new flavors - applesauce, cinnamon, etc - and they are always good. If they come out too dry for any reason, just cut them in half and spread on some butter, peanut butter or honey. You can’t mess them up!

Ingredients

· 1¾ c flour (ours is whole wheat)
· 1/4 c toasted wheat germ (if desired, I usually don’t have this in the house)
· 1 tsp baking soda
· 1c mashed ripe banana (about 3 medium bananas)
· ½ c honey
· ½ c natural creamy peanut butter
· 2 eggs
· 1/3 cup vegetable/canola oil
· ¼ c brown sugar
· 2 tsp vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 400º.
1. Line/spray 12 regular size muffin cups or 6-8 jumbo muffin cups.
2. Stir first 4 ingredients in small bowl to blend.
3. Using a mixer, beat bananas, honey, peanut butter, eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla.
4. Gradually beat in flour mixture.
5. Pour into muffin cups, about ¾ full.
Bake until toothpick comes out clean, about 20 mins. Cool on rack.

For some reason, when we buy bananas there is always one left behind that doesn’t seem to get eaten. If you have a banana turning brown on the counter, that is the best banana to bake with! If you don’t have time to bake it up in something yummy, put it in the freezer until you do. Once cold, the whole peel will turn dark brown, but just let it sit at room temp for a couple of hours and then slice one end off. The inside of the banana will easily slide out into a measuring cup, ready for you to bake with!

Actually this time I forgot to defrost the banana so I “defrosted” it in the toaster oven for 10 mins at 300 degrees while gathering everything else I needed.

Use 2 bananas for these Banana Oat Muffins:

Ingredients

 3/4 cup rolled oats
1  1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 shakes of salt
4 TB unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar (we used turbinado sugar)
1 large egg
1 cup mashed ripe banana
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup milk (we used almond milk)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together oats, flour, baking soda and salt.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat together butter and sugar until blended - the mixture will be sandy, rather than smooth. We used a hand mixer.

4. Add egg, banana and vanilla to lare bowl and mix until combined.

5. Gradually add dry ingredients to the large bowl, and stir mixture together until just combined.

6. Yummy mix-ins! We divided our mixture into 3 parts and added a different mix-in to each part: peanuts, chopped apple and raisins. Each of those 3 sections was poured into 2 jumbo muffin baking cups - making 2 banana peanut muffins, 2 banana apple muffins and 2 banana raisin muffins. Adding cinnamon or nutmeg to the apple or raisin muffins would be tasty too. Go easy with nutmeg, it’s strong!

7. After pouring into muffin tins (it’s OK to fill them up high), bake until the edges are golden and the centers are just set, about 25 minutes.

8. Let cool 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve at room temp or warm, plain or with butter or honey on top! Yum!

One Bowl - fast and delicious!!
We were craving something baked up fresh today, but didn’t want to O.D. on sugar, so we opted to bake muffins. Muffins are fun because they can be a breakfast or a snack, they can be eaten alone or with something yummy spread on top. Usually we make muffins using applesauce or bananas to provide moisture without needing a lot of oil or butter, but today we looked online to find something new. We adapted this recipe for Peanut butter muffins brushed with melted jelly and dipped in chopped peanuts.

Ingredients:

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Sift together the flour, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl
3. Microwave the butter until melted, about 22 seconds
4. Cut peanut butter and butter into dry mixture until it resembles coarse meal
5. Chop peanuts - the easy way to chop a small amount like this is to place them on a plate and smash them with the back of a soup spoon or meat mallet. Add to batter in large bowl.
6. Crack the eggs and beat them in a separate small bowl
7. Add beaten eggs and milk; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened
8. Fill jumbo muffin rack about 2/3 full with the batter
9. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes, or until done. You can test the centers by poking them with a toothpick. If the toothpick has sticky batter on it when you remove it, let them bake a few more minutes. We like them just barely done, still mushy.

Makes 6 jumbo muffins or 18 regular sized muffins.