Today is Secret Recipe Club reveal day

Today is Secret Recipe Club reveal day. Secret Recipe Club is a gathering of food bloggers where we are assigned a food blog, select and prepare a recipe, and on the designated day, share whose blog we were secretly assigned and post about the recipe. It’s a great way to meet other bloggers and find new recipes.

This month I was assigned Rebecca’s A Dusting of Sugar, a blog dedicated almost exclusively to baking and sweets. It was fun looking over her Sweet 100 List of things ever baker should try, and much to my surprise, I’ve made of number of the things even though baking is not something I do a lot -- strawberry pop tarts, (fresh fig, walnut, and rosemary) upside down cake, baklava, baked Alaska, bananas Foster, angel food cake, hummingbird cake, crème brulee, chocolate soufflé, and panna cotta -- but whoopie pies, Boston cream pie, cannoli, and homemade marshmallows are on my to-make-sometime list. I think these are basic desserts everyone who cooks regularly should try at some point.

Unfortunately, I was a bit short on time to try anything too extravagant, so I settled on Rebecca’s peanut butter chocolate chip banana muffins, something my guys would thoroughly enjoy. However, I was talking on the phone to my mom as I was making them and missed a key ingredient. The chocolate chips. I remembered them as I pulled the muffins from the oven, so I made a simple glaze of melted chocolate chips and a little half-and-half to satisfy the chocolate need. The recipe below reflects the changes I made to the original recipe, and I substituted half the all purpose flour with whole wheat pastry flour, cut the sugars in half, used crunchy peanut butter, and eliminated the additional oil. Rebecca suggests sifting the flour and being short on time, I skipped that step.

My tasters gave these two thumbs up, even with the omission of the chocolate chips. They were not too sweet, with a nice crumb, and the crunchy peanut butter adds nice texture.

Peanut Butter (Chocolate Chip) Banana Muffins

Make 18 muffins

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed, golden brown sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2-3 large, ripe bananas, mashed-enough for 1-1/4 cups banana
1 cup skim milk
3/4 cup chunky peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 egg whites egg
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, sift together, flours, sugars, baking powder, salt and the cinnamon; combine.

In another mixing bowl, combine mashed bananas, milk, peanut butter, egg whites, and vanilla; mix well.  Add this to the dry mixture and mix just enough to combine.  Stir in chocolate chips. DON’T FORGET THIS STEP.

Spray muffin tins with cooking spray, or use paper liners, and fill tins 3/4 full.  Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Print recipe.