Peanut Butter Banana Muffins

This recipe for Peanut Butter Banana Muffins makes a tasty, filling breakfast. Add chocolate to make breakfast feel like dessert!

Breakfast can be a challenging meal, with busy school and work schedules that demand getting up and out the door. These peanut butter banana muffins are here to save breakfast. They’re hearty and satisfying, and the chocolate chunks make them feel a little indulgent. And that’s never a bad way to start the day!

In fact, my kids can’t get enough of these muffins, and I think they will become a regular part of our weekday breakfast routine. A lot of the sweetness in these muffins comes from bananas, so they don’t have as much added sugar as most muffin recipes call for.

These are flavorful and tender, with a soft, moist crumb.

Peanut Butter Banana Muffin Ingredients

• Bananas–You’ll need a cup of overripe, mashed banana. This will require 2 large or 3 small bananas, and their skins should be very brown, with lots of spots.
• Peanut Butter– You can use 3/4 cup of any type of peanut butter you’d like. I prefer to use natural peanut butter (it’s just nuts and some sea salt) since it doesn’t have any added sugar. But I tested this recipe with several different kinds (including good old Jif) and they all worked great.
• Butter– 1 stick, or 1/2 cup of melted butter helps make the muffins moist.
• Sugar– You can use either any kind of granulated sugar. I like to use organic sugar.
• Eggs– You’ll need 2 large eggs.
• Vanilla Extract
• All-Purpose Flour
• Baking Powder
• Salt–Fine grain sea salt works the best
• Dark chocolate chips or chunks– Chunks are beautiful on top of muffins, but any dark or milk chocolate you have on hand will work great!

How to Make Bananas Ripen Quickly

As bananas ripen and age, they develop more sugars, flavor, and moisture. That’s why you want your bananas to have ripened to being spotty and brown if you want to bake with them.

But sometimes, the bananas just aren’t ready when you want to bake with them! If you have bananas that are yellow but not yet browning, you can speed up the ripening process in the oven. Simply preheat the oven to 300°F and place your bananas on a baking sheet.

Bake them in the oven for 30-45 minutes or until the peels have blackened. Remove them from the oven and allow the bananas to cool completely before using them in a recipe. You can peel them into a bowl to speed up the cooling process.

This process doesn’t work well with bananas that are still green, since they haven’t developed the flavors and sugars necessary for tasty banana-flavored baked goods.

How to Make Peanut Butter Banana Muffins

• Preheat the oven to 400° and grease a 12 cup muffin tin. Alternatively, you can line them with paper muffin liners.
• To make peanut butter banana muffins, begin by peeling and mashing 2 large or 3 small bananas. You want to have 1 to 1 1/4 cups of mashed banana.
• Stir the banana mash together with the 3/4 cup of peanut butter.
• Add the butter and sugar and mix it into the peanut butter banana mixture until it’s well combined.
• Stir in the eggs and vanilla extract until they are just combined.

• In a small, separate bowl, combine the 1 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/4 tsp. baking soda, and 1 tsp. of salt. Stir them together to evenly distribute the ingredients.
• Add the dry ingredients to the wet and use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to stir them together until there are just a few streaks of flour visible.
• Pour in 3/4 of the chocolate chips or chunks (if you’re using them) and continue stirring until they are evenly distributed and the flour is completely mixed in.

• Divide the batter evenly between the 12 muffin cups. I recommend using a portioning scoop like this one to get evenly sized muffins.
• Sprinkle a few of the remaining chocolate chunks on top.

• Bake the muffins at 400° for 20-22 minutes, or until the tops are a deep golden brown and look slightly crusty.
• Allow the peanut butter banana muffins to cool slightly before removing them from the tin. Slide a knife or fork down the side of each muffin and lift it out, rather than dumping them, to avoid having melted chocolate splattered everywhere.
• If you have leftover muffins, store them in an air-tight container or bag at room temperature. Refrigerating baked goods can dry them out, so avoid keeping them in the refrigerator.

Recipe Notes and Tips

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• While any kind of chocolate will work, I recommend at least semi-sweet chocolate. The darker chocolate complements the sweetness of the banana muffin nicely.
• You can use Chocolate chunks, chips, or chop up a chocolate bar if that’s what you have on hand. I think chocolate chunks are the pretties on top of muffins, but that’s an aesthetic preference and won’t affect the flavor at all.
• A large ice cream scoop (like this Oneida one, which is my favorite!) will make scooping the muffins much easier, and will give you a more evenly-sized muffins. You’ll need a heaping scoop for each muffin tin.
• If you’d like to make your peanut butter banana muffins dairy free, you can substiture a 1/2 cup of canola or vegetable oil for the butter. Also, make sure any chocolate you use is also dairy free.
• This recipe makes 12 standard size muffins

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