I’ve been having a very peaceful and lazy Sunday. It’s been great actually – slept in a bit, had a leisurely breakfast, got some homework accomplished (cleaned my house so my parents wouldn’t take my head off when they get home today…)

Since I was on a pretty good roll with getting things done, I decided I was making too much progress and had to interrupt myself somehow.

Yeah, that means mini-muffins. Yes, I have an obsession with taking perfectly normal-sized things and miniaturizing them.

I wanted to make something but I wasn’t quite sure whether I wanted to try to make something relatively healthy or whether I should just give in and make something heart-stopping and drenched in chocolate. I compromised with peanut butter and jelly muffins, telling myself that technically they do have nutritional value. I love peanut butter – I could probably eat a whole jar of the stuff in one sitting. I was going to make a simple peanut butter cookie, and then it occurred to me that there must be some way to put the second-best peanut butter combination (chocolate being the first) into a baked good. Hence, I fiddled around and made pb&j muffins that have the magical ability of turning you into a five-year-old. The peanut butter flavour is pretty light, but in a good way because the jam’s sweetness sets it off well.

These are not going to last long.

Peanut butter and jelly muffins 

Ingredients

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs, beaten
• Roughly 1/3 cup of whatever jam you like; this is a very rough estimate because I was just spooning it out of the jar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease your muffin tins well, because the jam tends to leak out the sides and make them sticky.
2. Mix flours, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Cut in peanut butter and cold butter with knives until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs (just like you were making scones). Add milk and eggs, and stir until just combined. It’ll be lumpy.
3. Fill half your muffin tin with batter – for normal sized muffins, this is probably a few tablespoons, for mini muffins, one small tablespoon. Add a teaspoon of jam on top of the batter. Spoon more batter on top until the muffin cup is full (this way you get nice tops).
   

   Before adding more batter

4. Bake for about 13 minutes for mini muffins and about 17 minutes for normal-sized muffins. I made 24 mini muffins and then 3 normal-sized because I had some leftover batter and I was too impatient to wait for the first batch to finish. I would guess this should make around 12 normal-sized muffins. Let them cool a bit and then take them out of the pan and stuff your face.