Chocolate Peanut Butter Muffins

Tonight I needed to come up with a breakfast solution for my husband that does not call for me to get up in the morning and cook.  Normally I would have something on hand like English muffins or beagles but I have been snowed in for a week and have not made it to the grocery store.  His solution is to stop at Tim Hortons but I am cheap and don't like him to waste money when I can put something together at home.

The main thing you should understand about my husband is that there are two things that keep him happy, chocolate, and peanut butter so you may be seeing a lot of those two things on this blog.  The crafty part is how many things you can make with chocolate and peanut butter as a base.  Now these are not two things I associate with breakfast but since muffins are usually just cake we disguised with oatmeal or bran to make ourselves feel better I won't feel guilty about it.  After searching online and putting some recipes I found together with a chocolate peanut butter cookie recipe of my own I came up with the following.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Muffins

Ingredients

Batter
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
3/4 cups cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3 eggs
2 cups milk
1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Filling
1/2 Cup peanut butter
1/4 Cup powdered sugar

Directions

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F.  

Batter: In a large bowl blend eggs, sugar, oil, vanilla and milk.  Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix only until everything is moistened (the less you mix the better).

Filling: In a small bowl mix powdered sugar and peanut butter until smooth.

At this point you have two options, if you want to just have the peanut butter as a filling only, half fill your muffin tins with batter and put a dollop of the peanut butter mixture in the centre and then cover the peanut butter with more batter until the tins are two thirds full.  The other option is to melt the peanut butter in the microwave for about 30 seconds and pour it over the top of the the batter after you have filled the tins.  After this bake for about 10-12 minutes (for standard sized muffins) or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean.

All in all they turned out well and I ended up with enough batter to make 16 standard muffins.  Something I might try next time is to use cold coffee in the place of some of the milk because it would give a richer chocolate flavor.  They are not too sweet which is something I like for breakfast and my husband ate two before bed so it must be something he likes too.