Recipe 2: Crunchy peanut butter banana muffins

So today was the day that actually read through Cake cover to cover – twice. What in heaven’s name have I let myself in for? There is no way that I am going to be able to replicate these recipes the same as the pictures in the book. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that this blog will probably turn into a comedy blog rather than a food blog because of the mishaps I will surely encounter as I attempt each recipe.

This week then, I decided that my best approach is to ease myself in to the recipes and leave the more complicated stuff for a while. I really am going to have to master some serious baking skills which I don’t exactly have at the moment. Ah well, practice makes perfect. Well, so the saying goes…

The recipe I chose for this week’s offering was Crunchy peanut butter banana muffins. I’d had banana muffins before so nothing startling there but I most definitely hadn’t eaten peanut butter banana muffins – that was until today, of course. Here’s how I made them…

Using an electric mixer, I creamed the softened butter before adding caster sugar, crunchy peanut butter and mashed banana. I gave all of that a mix before gradually adding in beaten eggs. Finally, I sifted in self-raising flour and folded it using a metal spoon. Then, it was time to divide the mixture between 12 muffin cases. I had bought large bun cases thinking that they must be the same as muffin cases but they mustn’t be as I had enough mixture for 18 cases. The recipe said to three-quarter fill each case and that’s exactly what I did using an ice-cream scoop – a tip I picked up from watching Ina Garten on her Barefoot Contessa show. However, I only needed to half-fill the scoop for each muffin. Into the oven the muffins then went for 25 minutes.

The verdict…

I was mightily impressed with these as was Dear Husband and as was Dear Son. I tried one about 10 minutes after they came out of the oven and about two hours later – purely for research purposes, of course. It didn’t matter – both times they tasted gorgeous! Dear Husband scored them 8 marks as did I. Dear Son scored them a 4 and then a 10 but again, he doesn’t exactly appreciate the significance of those numbers just yet. Well, he is still only 3!

This recipe was easy and quick. Thankfully, it was simply a case of making the muffins and not having to make some sort of icing too even though I love icing. I was just glad to have them as they were. They didn’t taste too sweet and, with the inclusion of the banana, my brain is programmed to think they’re healthier than a lot of other sweet stuff I could eat. I think I did a good enough job of them and will surely make them again. I definitely think they’d be a nice inclusion in a lunch box. Somehow though, I know these won't last the week in our house!