Peanut Butter Stuffed Banana Muffins #MuffinMonday

Peanut butter stuffed banana muffins are baked with our favorite banana batter filled with a good teaspoon of peanut butter each, then dipped in a sweet peanut butter glaze. These guys are a special treat for breakfast, snack time or even dessert.

Whenever I have bananas that are past their best, I can’t bear to waste them. My go-to recipe when my girls were still at home was banana cake, a light and fluffy after-school snack they both enjoyed. (Want something approaching muffins? Bake the batter as cupcakes.) Nowadays I am more likely to mix up some muffins.

If bananas are your favorite, check out these other recipes you might enjoy:

• Homemade Banana Cream Pie
• Banana Fritters
• Banana Pecan Bundt with Bananas Foster Frosting
• Banana Coconut Pineapple Bundt

For this month’s Muffin Monday, I decided to kick those banana muffins up a notch or two with the addition of peanut butter, but not mixed into the batter since that might overpower the banana flavor. Instead I froze 12 teaspoons of peanut butter and tucked them in the batter, where they became a lovely soft surprise.

Peanut Butter Stuffed Banana Muffins

Make these muffins with or without the peanut butter stuffing or the peanut butter glaze for a simpler treat, but if you’ve got just a little extra time, I recommend you make all three. The peanut butter can be popped in the freezer the night before, if you are baking these for breakfast.

Ingredients
For the muffin batter:
12 teaspoons peanut butter, frozen separately
3 ripe bananas
1/3 cup or 75g butter, melted and cooled
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the glaze:
1 rounded tablespoon peanut butter
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 cup or 130g powdered sugar
pinch fine sea salt

Method
Cover a plate with cling film or waxed paper and scoop out 12 teaspoons of peanut butter onto the prepared plate. Put the plate in the freezer until ready to bake, but for at least 30 minutes. The peanut butter never gets completely hard, even if left overnight but it does firm up nicely.

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by lining it with muffin papers. I also like to give the muffin papers a quick spray of nonstick cooking spray to help them release the muffins after baking.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

In a large mixing bowl, use a fork to mash your three very ripe bananas. Whisk in the butter, eggs and vanilla until thoroughly combined.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl and fold until just combined.

Scoop a little more than half of the batter into the 12 muffin cups. Remove the teaspoons of peanut butter from the freezer and poke one into each of the muffin cups.

Top with the remaining banana batter making sure to cover the peanut butter completely. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown in the preheated oven.

Meanwhile, make the peanut butter glaze by mixing all of the ingredients together in a small bowl.

Remove the muffins from the oven and set them aside until they are cool enough to handle, then remove them from the baking pan and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

Once the peanut butter stuffed banana muffins are cool, dip the tops in the glaze.

Set aside to dry. I had plenty of glaze so I actually dipped mine twice. Because more peanut butter is always a good thing.

Enjoy!

Check out all the other lovely muffins my Muffin Monday baking group is sharing today!

• Banana Nut Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Butternut Squash & Apple Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cheezy Garlic Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Healthy Carrot Cake Muffins from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Papaya Muffins from Passion Kneaded
• Peanut Butter Stuffed Banana Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

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Creamy Crab and Scallop Chowder #FishFridayFoodies

My creamy crab and scallop chowder begins with frying bacon, as all the best recipes do. Pour in the whipping cream, add a whole pound of crabmeat AND a pound of bay scallops, for a deliciously rich mouthful in every spoon.

When our elder daughter graduated from university in 2013, she immediately started a job in New York City. She was paid hourly so if she didn’t work, she didn’t get paid. Which also means no vacation time. It’s a hard cruel world, right?

As summer turned to autumn, thoughts of the possibility of Christmas without her sent me to the internet where I looked for a house we could afford to rent for three weeks, somewhere in New England. We ended up in a little town called Tiverton in Rhode Island. When we arrived at the home, a typical northeastern winter had already set in with real snowfall that stuck still covering the trees and bushes and lawn.

Just a few days before Christmas, on our daughter’s birthday in fact, we decided we needed some clam chowder to warm us up from the inside out. We found delicious bowls in nearby Newport and I’ve been a chowder fan ever since.

Creamy Crab and Scallop Chowder

This recipe is adapted from the Nantucket Chowder recipe from an issue of Bon Appétit magazine, December 1995 and it's my favorite! See if you don't agree.

Ingredients to serve 6
8 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
2 medium onions, peeled and chopped
3-4 sprigs fresh thyme, plus extra for garnish, if desired
4 1/4 cups or 1L seafood or fish stock
1/2 cup or 120ml dry white wine
2 medium potatoes, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
3/4 cup or 180ml whipping cream
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 lb or 450g bay scallops, thawed if frozen
1 lb or 450g handpicked cooked crabmeat
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Traditional chowder accompaniment: oyster crackers – Buy some or make your own with this simple recipe: Easy homemade oyster crackers

Method
Fry the bacon pieces in a large Dutch oven, over a medium heat. Once the bacon is crispy, remove it from the pot with a slotted spoon and put it on some folded paper towels to drain.

Remove all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon drippings from the pot. You can discard what you remove but I suggest you put it in a clean jar in the refrigerator where it will keep for several weeks. Use it whenever you want to add a little flavor to a dish, like roasted vegetables or pan-fried chicken.

Add the onions and thyme to the pot and sauté them over a medium heat, until they soften, stirring occasionally. This just takes a few minutes.

Pour the stock and white wine into the pot, along with the potato cubes. Bring the stock to a boil and then lower the heat till it’s just above a simmer. Cook for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

While the potatoes cook, take a few minutes to look through your crabmeat to make sure all the little bits of shell have been removed. Even the best, most conscientious pickers can miss some.

Remove the thyme sprigs from the pot and discard. Ladle about half of the chowder into a blender and pulse till smooth. Or you can use a hand blender in a tall measuring vessel, like I do.

Pour the smooth mixture back into the pot and cook for another 10-15 minutes, until it thickens slightly.

Whisk the cornstarch into the cold cream until it is completely dissolved. Add the cream to the chowder pot, stirring quickly.

 Sprinkle in half of the bacon and return to a gentle simmer.

Add the bay scallops and crabmeat to the chowder. Heat through and season the chowder to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Ladle the chowder into bowls. Sprinkle the remaining bacon, garnish with fresh thyme leaves, if desired, and serve immediately. If you have some oyster crackers, put those out too and folks can help themselves.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to this month’s Fish Friday Foodies host, P from The Saucy Southerner. Check out all the lovely crab recipes we are sharing today.

An InLinkz Link-up

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Cherry Brownie Bundtlets #BundtBakers

These chewy cherry brownie bundtlets are as delicious as they are pretty, with a rich brown crumb, ribbons of cherry jam inside and little dollops of cherry jam on top. Best of all, they are super easy to make.

A few months ago I shared a fabulous recipe for marmalade glazed baked chicken from my friend Jamie Schler’s beautiful book, Orange Appeal* and I mentioned a few of her other recipes I had tried. One of those was chocolate orange marmalade brownies. Baked in a small pan, they are sticky and chocolatey with a welcome bite of bitter orange.

It occurred to me that Jamie’s recipe is wonderful in another way. It is readily adaptable to whatever other flavors of jam or marmalade you might have on hand, assuming they work well with chocolate, of course. I decided to put that theory to the test for this month’s Bundt Bakers theme of cherries.

Since cherry jam is sweeter than orange marmalade, I adjusted the amount of sugar necessary accordingly. And because I am lazy, I also threw it all together in the mixing bowl instead of creaming the butter and sugar, etc.

Cherry Brownie Bundlets

Cherries and chocolate are a classic combination. When you bring these treats to the table, I promise they’ll get an Oooooh! and a collective swoon from all the chocolate and cherry lovers. This recipe is adapted from the chocolate orange brownies in Orange Appeal by Jamie Schler.

Ingredients
For the bundtlets:
2 ounces (60g) dark chocolate
1 ounce (30g) cherry flavored 70% dark chocolate (Lindt Excellence Cherry Intense)
3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon or 105g all-purpose flour
3/4 cup or 150g light brown sugar
1/2 cup or 113g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing the pan
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon amaretto liqueur
3 heaping tablespoons good quality cherry jam

For topping:
6 teaspoons cherry jam

N.B. Allergy alert: The Lindt Cherry Intense chocolate bar has little nibs of almond. I was not aware when I bought it since almond is not mentioned in the name, but it is there in the description and ingredients list.

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a 12-cup bundtlet pan by greasing it liberally with melted butter. I use a pastry brush for this job.

Put your chocolates, broken into pieces, into a microwaveable bowl and melt them with a few short zaps of 10-15 seconds at a time, stirring in between as they start to melt. Set the melted chocolate aside.

In the bowl of your stand mixer or another mixing bowl if you are using electric beaters, add all of the other ingredients except the cherry jam. Beat on medium for 1-2 minutes, scraping the bowl down with a rubber spatula halfway through.

Pour in the melted chocolate and beat briefly until combined, scraping the bowl down in between.

Put the cherry jam in the batter in big dollops. Use your spatula to fold it in so that there are still big bits of jam visible.

Use a spoon or scoop to divide the batter into the prepared bundtlet pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until the cherry brownie bundtlets have risen nicely and are a little darker brown around the edges.

Remove them from the oven and leave to cool for just a couple of minutes before turning them out of the pan. If the baked jam is sticking to your pan, use a small spoon to loosen the bundtlets before turning them out.

Use the bottom of a chopstick or a similar tool to push the middle of the bundtlets down to make a hole.

Once the bundtlets are cool, spoon about 1/2 a teaspoon of cherry jam into the center of each.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to this month’s host Sneha of Sneha’s Recipe for the delightful theme. Check out all the other cherrylicious Bundts we have for you today.

• Apple, Poppyseed and Cherry Bundt Cake from Katinspajz
• Banana Split Bundt Cake from Patty's Cake
• Bundt Cake Chocolate and Cherries from Merce`s Cake
• Cherry Brownie Bundtlets from Food Lust People Love
• Cherry-Port Swirled Bundt Cake with Almond Streusel from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Cherries Zebra Bundt Cake from PatyCo.Candy bar
• Chocolate Cherry Bundtlets from Sweet Sensations
• Chocolate Covered Cherry Cake from The Queen of Scones
• Glazed Cherry Coconut Cake from Sneha's Recipe
• Lemon Cherry Babka from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Lemon Maraschino Buttermilk Bundt Cake from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Mary Berry Cherry Cake from Palatable Pastime
• Shirley Temple Bundt Cake from Cookaholic Wife
• White Chocolate Bundt Cake with Black Cherry Jam from I Love Bundt Cakes

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.


*Amazon affiliate link: If you buy the book Orange Appeal after following this link, I earn a few pennies at no extra cost to you. Just go read the reviews then decide. It's a wonderful book.

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