Last week I had a couple of grandgirls over for a sleepover. One of them, Leah, has enjoyed being in the kitchen since she was little. She’s very creative and likes to invent things. My plan was for us to make banana muffins together. Leah, however, needed to take it to another level.
We started with our basic banana muffin recipe and this time Leah did most of the work while I supervised. After all, she’s 11 now and quite capable in the kitchen – not to mention tall enough to reach just about everything that I can reach. 
After the muffins were baked is when the real fun started. Leah decided she wanted a peanut butter filling in the muffins. So, we brainstormed a couple of ideas for doing that with muffins baked in a liner. After trying a couple different methods including sticking an icing tip directly into the top of the muffin to extrude filling into it that way, and using a straw to make a small indentation to put filling in, Leah had a stroke of genius. She used a small spoon to scoop out some of the muffin from the top, piped filling into the indentation, then sprinkled it with pieces of the muffin she had removed. Brilliant!
The result was quite tasty and not too bad to look at. I’d say our little pastry chef has some potential. The recipe is below if you’d like to try it out for yourself.
LEAH’S PEANUT BUTTER FILLED BANANA MUFFINS
3C. Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1t. Baking Soda
1t. Salt
1/2 t. Baking Powder
2C. Sugar
1C. Vegetable or Canola oil
3 Lg. Eggs
2t. Vanilla
4 Ripe Bananas, coarsely mashed
Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners. Preheat oven to 325°F. Mash bananas and set aside. Whisk together all dry ingredients except the sugar in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, beat wet ingredients and sugar to blend. Stir in the banana. Add the dry ingredients and stir just until blended. Drop batter into muffin cups with an ice cream scoop. Bake 25-30 mins. until tops are golden brown.
PEANUT BUTTER FILLING
1C. Creamy Peanut Butter
1/2C. Unsalted Butter, softened
1/2C. Powdered Sugar
Using a stand or hand mixer, combine all ingredients until smooth and creamy. Let muffins cool completely. With a small spoon scoop a small amount of the muffin out of the top. Using whatever icing tip you prefer, pipe a small amount of filling into the recess you created in the muffin. Sprinkle the filling with pieces of the removed muffin and enjoy!
