Banana Muffins with Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chips

I wanted something fast to make this evening, and I needed to use up some bananas because the pile in the freezer was getting a bit out of hand so muffins seemed like an ideal choice since they mix up quickly and are out of the oven in about 20 minutes.

I don't have a favorite banana bread/muffin mix which kind of surprises me considering how often I have bananas to use up. I do like the java streusal banana muffin recipe in my Passion for Baking Book, but I wanted something a little different than that today. Actually though the recipe below is the recipe from the Passion for Baking book, just minus the streusal, using buttermilk in place of coffee, and throwing in the chips I wanted. I asked Chris whether he wanted chocolate and peanut butter chips in there or coconut and pecans and he went for the chocolate and peanut butter.




Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsps vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup mashed bananas (about 2 large)
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 375. Spray a standard muffin tin with cooking spray -- I ended up with 16 muffins total -- so you may need two muffin tins, unless you want super-overfilled muffin cups.

Cream the butter with the sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well, then add the vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour to the sugar/egg mixture and mix briefly. While that is mixing add the banana and buttermilk and mix just until the flour disappears. Over-mixing muffins batter can make tough muffins. Fold in the chips.

Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin pans and bake for 15-20 minutes or until a skewer comes out of the middle clean. I checked mine at 20 minutes and they were almost overdone.