Peanut Butter Banana Muffins

As far as I'm concerned, the only way to eat a banana is with PEANUT BUTTER. Spoonful of peanut butter plus a bite of banana. Yum. So as I started to make banana muffins this morning it occurred to me that a dollop of peanut butter right in the middle could only make the muffins better.

A nice ripe banana is destined to become a muffin. These bananas are much too ripe for me to eat on their own. My favorite Banana Muffin recipe started out as a Banana Scotch Muffin recipe from a church cookbook. It caught my eye because it adds oats to the batter. I've changed it just a little bit.

Peanut Butter Banana Muffins

1 c all purpose flour
1 c quick cooking oats - you could use old-fashioned, but I'd use a little less
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c sugar
2 ripe bananas, broken into pieces
1/4 c low-fat vanilla yogurt -you could use plain, also
1/4 c milk -just go ahead and pour yourself a big glass while you're at it. You're going to need it with these muffins!
1 tsp good vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Prepare your muffin tin with liners and spray with cooking spray.
Combine dry ingredients and mix until well combined.
Add in remaining ingredients. I don't mash the banana beforehand. The mixer breaks them up well enough and then there are little chunks of banana throughout my muffins. Mmmmmm...

Mix just until the ingredients are combined. Pour into your muffin tin. I like to use an ice cream scoop fill my muffin tin. It keeps them all about the same size. This recipe makes 12 good sized muffins.

Prepare the topping:
1/3 c peanut butter
1/4 c cream cheese - I used fat free
2 T powdered sugar
Mix until smooth. Put a BIG dollop in the middle of each muffin.
Bake at 350 for 15 to 18 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on a wire cooling rack.


Clayton watched them bake for approximately 10 of the 17 minutes ours were in the oven...

While Clayton loved them...

Levi wasn't quite so sure what I was feeding to him!

You'll notice that in the top picture some of the muffins don't have peanut butter filling, but a white filling. I wasn't 100% confident in how these would turn out - looking back, I just wasn't thinking clearly at all. So I did half of mine with a cream cheese and powdered sugar dollop. Those turned out okay. They were much better with the peanut butter. And as I write this I just had a delicious idea- I can't believe I didn't think of it before! Add in 1 c of mini chocolate chips to the batter. OR, even better, melt chocolate chips with a little bit of butter and spread on top. Oh my. Clearly, I made these too early this morning. Good thing we have more ripe bananas. I just might have to make another batch!