When Life Gives You Ripe Bananas...

Make muffins!

We love a good banana in the Maxwell house, but we also have a bad habit of not eating them before they turn black.

This week I decided I would take advantage of our overly ripe fruit and make some sort of concoction. Now, I'm not a huge banana flavored food lover. Eat a banana? Yes. Eat banana pudding? Yes. Eat just about anything else banana flavored? No, thank you. But, I figured I could always give away whatever I made, I just didn't want to throw another thing of them away!

I scoured the internet looking for recipes for banana themed foods. I ended up deciding on making simple banana chocolate chip muffins. The recipe couldn't have been easier and the only item it required me to buy was sour cream*. Right before I started to prepare them though, I decided on making a little variation to the recipe. I must have been channeling Elvis, because I just couldn't refrain from adding peanut butter to the recipe. So, below you will find my tweaked version of peanut butter and banana muffins. (I'd love to give credit to whomever had the original recipe, but apparently I never saved the site it came from and I can't for the life of me remember where I ended up finding it!!)

*Although, if I had taken inventory before I went to the grocery I would have noticed that I only had a few chocolate chips left in the pantry! I ended up only being able to put chocolate chips in 3 of the muffins.

PB & Banana Muffins

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed, ripe banana (about 2 large bananas)

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup peanut butter

2 tablespoons sour cream

1/4 cup chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees and place paper liners in a muffin tin. Spray each liner with a shot of non-stick cooking spray.

2. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside.

3. In another bowl, beat bananas, sugar, egg, vanilla and peanut butter. Stir in the sour cream. If you have a two year old, they make good stirrers!

4. Stir flour mixture into banana mixture.

5. Stir in chocolate chips. Now, the recipe calls for 1/4 cup, but go ahead and add as many as you want. I won't tell!

6. Fill muffin tins about 3/4 of the way full.

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of muffins comes out clean.

My batch only ended up making 10 muffins, but I like to fill mine really full so they puff up nice and tall. You could easily get 12 muffins if you disperse your batter accordingly.

Like I said earlier, I'm not a big fan of banana flavored foods, but my husband ate 3 of these the day I made them, so they must be pretty good. I brought a few to my co-workers today and they really seemed to enjoy them as well.

Enjoy!