Peanut Butter Surprise Muffins

So, I am apparently obsessed with sandwiches recently.  Last week, it was BLT pasta.  This week it is a sandwich inspired muffin.  Now I LOVE LOVE LOVE BLT sandwiches and I wait for and look forward to them all year long...but will only eat them when tomatoes are in season.  (But if you read my post with the recipe you knew that already).  This muffin was inspired by a sandwich that doesn't even make my top 3.  If I sat down and wrote it out, it might make my top 10...peanut butter and jelly.  And I just spoiled the surprise.  That's ok you don't have to tell your kids and you will earn an "awesome mom" badge, as long as your kids aren't allergic to peanut butter...in which case you can probably skip this and come back tomorrow.

This is a recipe I tweaked (not by much) from a recipe for peanut butter bread in a Gooseberry patch cookbook.*  The bread is great on its own and makes beeyoutiful toast.  But I often am making something like this in the morning and don't have 50 minutes for bread to bake.  My children are HUNGRY in the morning.  So I do this instead.

*Gooseberry Patch cookbooks are some of my favorite cookbooks.  I have 3 of them.  I use the Country Baking one weekly, at least.  This bread recipe can be found in that one. I got all 3 of mine as wedding gifts 10 years ago and think they were a very good choice.  :)  So thank you to whoever bought them.  I don't remember.

Ok, enough rambling....here we go.

Peanut Butter Surprise Muffins

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 t vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup milk
2 1/4 cup all purpose flour
4 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
your favorite jelly or jam

In a large bowl, blend together sugar, peanut butter and vanilla.  Gradually, pour in milk; mix well.*  Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; add to peanut butter mixture.

Option 1:  Bread ( recipe as written in Gooseberry Patch)
Now at this point if you want to make the bread you just spread it in a greased 9X 5 loaf pan and bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes.

Option 2:  Surprise muffins
grease your muffin tin and fill muffin cups about 1/4 full.  Put a small scoop of your favorite jam, about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon, on batter in muffin cup.  Cover with muffin batter.  Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes.  When I did this I got 18 muffins.

Option 3.  Plain muffins
Scoop batter into greased muffin tins and bake at 350 for about 15 minutes.

All three options are excellent!!

* When you stir in the milk gradually, it gets REALLY watery.  It is not a mistake.  It will slosh around like soup.  But when you add the flour mixture (which I never sift-I just stir it together in a separate bowl) it will all come together nicely...promise!

If you eat them hot from the oven like we did, have your kids break them open and steam...that jelly gets HOT in there!  :)