Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins

"Gee," I thought, "We sure have an awful lot of peanut butter!"  We usually do.  Between WIC and TEFAP we're buried in peanut butter.  In fact, that's why I make my own jams and jellies (that, and it's fun to make jam!).  But we had a serious overstock.  Meanwhile I've been making and freezing muffins for when it's my turn for snacks at Junior's preschool.  So I thought "Why not peanut butter muffins?"  Then I remembered that as a kid I'd make jelly muffins from Bisquick, and figured peanut butter and jelly muffins would be a great kid treat.  (I'm setting aside extra banana muffins for kids with nut sensitivities).

The original recipe is from Jif.  I doubled it and got 30 nice muffins!  Doubling your recipe will use exactly one 16 oz jar of peanut butter, which is convenient.  Peanut butter is a pain to measure.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins

2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup milk
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup jam or jelly

Heat oven to 375ºF. Spray muffin pan with no-stick cooking spray. Stir together flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl.

In a large bowl combine milk, eggs, cup sugar, peanut butter and oil.  Blend on low speed of electric mixer until smooth and creamy.  Add dry ingredients and combine until just moistened. Do not over beat.

Fill prepared muffin cups evenly with half of the batter. Place 2 level teaspoons jam or preserves in the center of each muffin. Evenly divide remaining batter between muffin cups. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar. Bake 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven. Cool in pan 5 minutes. 

The catch to these is the jelly is going to get VERY hot and goosh out while cooking.  Just after you take them out of the oven run a sharp knife around the muffins where jelly has escaped to keep the muffin from gluing to the pan.  The pan will be a pain to clean, so get it in hot soapy water immediately!

Be sure to let them cool well before giving them to kids.  That jelly is hot!

Penny Pinching: Snacks to Go

If you're a parent, you're busy. Seems you're always on the go for one thing or another, and at some point those kids need to be fed! How often do you find your self going for pre-fab snacks for convenience? It's pretty easy, what with 100-calorie packs being all the rage and those big cups of Nabisco snacks lurking right at the checkout next to the animal crackers. Problem is, they're expensive.

Take those handy little 100 calorie snack packs by Nabisco et. al. You're paying roughly three dollars for six snacks - 50 cents per. It doesn't sound bad unless you have a couple of kids eating them a couple times a day. And those cups of Teddy Grahams? I approve of Teddy Grahams as a snack, but there are three servings in those cups! Again, you're spending about 50 cents a serving.

It's really easy to make your own snack packs, it just takes a little preparation. The first thing you need is a box of snack-sized zipper-close bags (they're about half the size of a sandwich bag). Walmart's house brand is about $1.50 for a box of 50. Then get some snacks. Look for store-brand alternatives to the expensive national brands. Fred Meyer and Safeway have snack crackers and snack grahams in fun shapes that run about $2.00 a box on sale, and there's 9 servings in a box, so do this just once and you've paid for the bags.

You can just toss handfuls into bags, or check the nutrition information on the box for serving sizes. If you're counting calories, do the math and make your own 100 calorie packs. Spend a half hour on the weekend and fill a box or bin with your own pre-packed snacks and you're prepared for lunches, on-the-go snacks, and portion controlled munchies.

I like to avoid anything that needs refrigeration so that if you don't use the snack it doesn't go to waste, but that doesn't mean that you're stuck with crackers. Hit the fruit section for raisins, dried cherries, and yummy yogurt covered fruit. You can get a big bag of store brand raisins much cheaper than the national brand of little raisin boxes, and they won't go stale in a zipper bag like they do in a box.

Other easy and inexpensive snack ideas are dry cereal, popcorn, pretzels, and Chex Mix (make your own, it's tastier and more nutritious). I've even made cookies, frozen them two to a bag, and grabbed those on the way out the door (they thaw very fast).

Do You Know the Muffin Man?

I sat down to do this blog and discovered I'd somehow managed to not blog all of September. So much for resolve! I have the makings of several blogs that I kept meaning to get to... half credit, I suppose.

In the last six weeks everyone in the family has started school. Except me. Kiddo's in first grade, Junior started preschool, and hubby's taking night classes for his A.S. In the midst of that we had a brush with the flu, Kiddo had an ear infection, and I had my 25 year old crown removed for replacement. I've been busy at work too, as EQII released another game update and I had one staffer in the hospital for a week.

I really don't know how families with two working parents do it. I've been running everywhere for doctor's appointments, school orientations, regular errands, and getting kids to and from school (we're too close to Kiddo's school for a bus and Junior's preschool is across town). If I had a regular job I would have missed at least a quarter of it in the last month and I'd be paying for before-and-after-school care for the kids. Just trying to schedule appointments so no one misses school and I can pick everyone up on time requires a high level of organization.

This week my extra task is snacks for Jackie's preschool. We were told at the beginning of the year that parents would take turns week-by-week. So far Miss Jeannie, Jackie's main teacher, has taken all the weeks. I get the first parent's turn.

When I picked Jackie up yesterday they were having popcorn and fruit ring cereal for snack. Which is fine, I guess, the cereal's fortified and popcorn is a great snack, but I can't do anything by halves. I whipped out all my healthy fun kid snack recipes - chocolate zucchini bread, oatmeal applesauce cookies, banana blueberry muffins, and pumpkin cookies. I'll be baking all weekend!

I only had four recipes so I went looking. One thing I've got excess of is dates, which have been in our last few TEFAP boxes. I was thinking to make the Joy of Cooking basic muffin recipe and just fold chopped dates in, but then I found this recipe. The only thing I had to buy was an orange for the zest. The original recipe is linked; what I actually used is below.

Orange Date Muffins

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon grated orange zest
1/3 cup orange juice
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons oil
2/3 cup chopped dates

Makes 12 muffins (I tripled the recipe and it came out fine)

To get orange zest, take a fine grater to the skin of a thick skinned orange (try to avoid the white part). This will give your muffins a lovely fragrance and taste. The original recipe also had walnuts, but I've never liked nuts in my baked goods.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Place rack in the middle of the oven. Prepare a muffin tin by coating the cups with non-stick spray or use paper muffin cups.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground cinnamon, and orange zest. In a separate bowl, mix together the orange juice, buttermilk, egg, vanilla extract, and melted and cooled butter. Add the milk and egg mixture to the flour mixture. Stir just until combined. Fold in the dates. Do not over mix the batter or the muffins will be tough when baked.

Evenly divide the mixture among the 12 muffins cups and sprinkle each muffin with a little sugar, if desired. Place in the oven and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until very lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool.

Buttermilk substitutions are worth mentioning again. Buttermilk not only gives baking good flavor, but helps the raising. You can use plain yogurt in place of buttermilk, or you can make your own by adding 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice to one cup of milk and letting it stand for 10 minutes. I like to use buttermilk powder, which you add to the dry ingredients and then add the water you'd reconstitute it with to the wet ingredients.

By the way, you can fit 12 muffins in a gallon zip-close bag. Get as much air out as possible and you can freeze them. Just be sure they are completely cool before you do, or the condensation in the bag will make them a bit mushy when they thaw.

Coming soon: another product review, and the banana bread recipe that won me several blue ribbons as a kid.