#10: Peanut Butter and Jam Muffins

I have a slight obsession with PB&J. It came along with the realization that I do, in fact, like peanut butter. And I've always loved jam.

My mom borrowed a muffin recipe book from the library a while back, and it is due soon. So, I decided that I should bake something from that book before we have to return it. If this turns out well, then I'll probably end up saving the recipe...

Actually. A lot of food bloggers include recipes, so I should return the favour.

PB&J Muffins (from "the 250 best muffin recipes")

Ingredients
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp margarine, melted
jam (they recommend grape jelly and apricot jam)

Steps
1. Preheat oven to 375 F or 190 C
2. Sift together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the center.
3. In another bowl, combine peanut butter and eggs; beat well. Add milk, vanilla and margarine; mix thoroughly. Add to dry ingredients; mix until moist.
4. Spoon batter into prepared muffin tin (they said to grease it, but I just used paper), filling about 3/4 full. Make an indentation in the center of each. Spoon 1 tsp of jam into each muffin. Bake in preheated oven for about 20 minutes.

My yield: 12 muffins

Dry ingredients!

Wet ingredients!

I happen to love peanut butter with strawberry jam and I still have some freezer jam that Judy helped me make, so I used that instead of grape or apricot.

As I was making the wet ingredient part, the fragrance of peanut butter made me really excited. I'm actually writing this as they bake, haha. And I got so excited about sticking them in the oven that I forgot to take a picture before they went in... whoops.

So then I opened the oven and took a quick picture. Too cool for school, that's me.

They look like cookies.

The muffins just finished. They sorta exploded more than I expected and the jam spilled onto the pan. I probably could've gone for 2 dozen mini muffins and it would have been cleaner, but I was feeling lazy.

Jam explodes!

Anyway, they're done. Now I'm just waiting for it to cool a little bit more...



I ate a bite! I like it -- not too sweet, so the ridiculously sweet jam complements it well. And it came off the paper fairly cleanly (don't want to think about how much fat content there is...)


Next time, I think I will fill half and then put the jam inside. Not only is it like a happy surprise, but it's also probably a lot cleaner.



Unrelated note: I probably should've dusted the electric fan that I moved into my room before using it. There are little fuzzy things flying around my room.