peanut butter banana chocolate chip (and cinnamon) muffins

In these muffins:

flour

salt

baking powder

cinnamon

chocolate chips

white sugar

brown sugar

eggs

milk

banana

peanut butter

Yield: 24 muffins

Much like a kindergartener, one of my favorite times of day is morning snack time. You know the hour: you’ve had your cereal or yogurt bright and early, but now it’s 10:30 and the belly’s rumbling. You need something to tide you over til lunch—something that will go just right with the rest of your coffee.

May I recommend?

Lately, my morning hunger-buster has been a muffin made up of three mainstays of the breakfast pantheon: peanut butter, banana, and cinnamon. Dump in some chocolate chips and you’ve got the most enviable snack on the playground.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup chocolate chips

1/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

1 mashed banana

3/4 cup peanut butter

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and chocolate chips (in the video below, I added the cinnamon and chocolate chips later—quite simply because I forgot to add them to this dry bowl earlier). Set aside.

2. In a larger bowl, whisk together the sugars and eggs until smooth. Then add the milk, mashed banana, and peanut butter (I dislike spooning peanut butter into a measuring cup only to struggle with scraping every last bit of it back out of the measuring cup—so for me, ¾ cup = three solid spoonfuls). Whisk until you’ve got yourself a nice pb-banana soup.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in two or three batches, stirring to incorporate the dry stuff before adding more (I don’t recommend using a whisk for this, which I did in the video—use a big metal or wooden spoon instead). Stir until the last of the flour has been incorporated; don’t overstir.

4. Spray or grease your muffin liners with vegetable oil or butter. You can also grease the muffin tin directly and skip the liners altogether.

5. Fill the muffin cups about 2/3 full of batter. Bake at 375°F for 14 minutes, or until the muffin tops spring back when you tap them with a finger.

6. If you don't plan on eating 24 muffins the same day you bake them, let them cool before packing them up for storage. I wrap mine in foil or put them in sealable bags in groups of two to four. Then I put all these wrapped bunches in one big gallon bag and tuck it into the freezer. Thaw/nuke individual muffins as needed.

Maybe morning snacks haven't traditionally been your thing. And that's okay. It's permissible to eat these muffins at any time of day. But if you end up adopting the midmorning tasty break, you, like me, might come to really look forward to that blessed pre-noon peanut butter pick-me-up; and like me, you might one day interrupt your colleague's work at 10:30am by singing"IT'S MUFFIN TIIIME" on your way to the microwave.

Here's to making the kinds of muffins you want to sing about.