Banana and Peanut Butter Muffins

OMG I'M BACK!!

I think I officially win the worst-blogger-ever award. It took a LONG time to move and finally get somewhat settled in, and while there are still a few boxes to unpack and pictures to hang, I am happy to say that my house is definitely coming along nicely. And as you can see, I have an amazing new kitchen.

Complete with a busted pipe and hole in the ceiling.

The joys of home ownership! (This has since been fixed, and my shockingly handy boyfriend has already patched the hole! But needless to say, it caused some mild headaches.)

So for the first time in a long time, I had a little bit of time to bake! I decided to try the most delicious sounding banana and peanut butter muffins. For this you need:

2 and 1/3 cups flour
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
2 ripe bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line your muffin pan with cupcake liners and set aside. This recipe makes about 18 muffins, so if you have a 12 cup muffin pan like I do, you will have to make a couple batches.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, and then set aside.

Beat the butter (which I microwaved for a few seconds first to make softer - lesson learned from the coconut meltaways), with the peanut butter (which, by the way, is impossible to know if you have 1/4 a cup of, since it sticks to the measuring cup and you have to just spoon a bunch in, although I guess there's no real fear of too much peanut butter, ever) in a large bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Already delicious. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy and even more delicious. Beat in eggs, then alternately beat in flour mixture, milk, and bananas with mixer on low speed until blended.

Evenly spoon the batter into the prepared pan(s) to make 18 muffins, and carefully fill the empty cups with water.

Bake for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes and then remove from pan to cool completely.

A couple things about these muffins - first of all, I think if I make them again, I will use more peanut butter. They were good but kind of had a generic muffin flavor and the peanut butter was a little more subtle than I wanted it to be. Second, for some reason they were like 90% better the next day than they were that night. So if you make them, I recommend waiting until the next day to eat or serve them. Maybe the flavors need time to settle in. Or something.

Anyway I'm happy to be back to blogging and hope to start updating once a week again. Hope everyone is enjoying the last few days of summer!