With Elvis’ birthday coming up and all, I was inspired by the Baking Bites post on Peanut Butter Swirl Banana Bread to do some experimentation of my own.
I made the peanut butter swirl as written, although I added some chopped peanuts along with the smooth peanut butter. The texture was… weird. Sort of grainy, sort of sticky… I had hopes it would even out in the cooking, but those hopes, as you’ll see later, were disappointed.
For the banana bread, I used my favorite Banana Bread recipe, which I got from an old cookbook of recipes written by science fiction authors (called “Serve it Forth : Cooking with Anne McCaffrey“). It’s Kathy Tyers’ Four-Generation Banana Bread from the Philippines, and I’ve found it to make a wonderfully flavorful banana bread that is moist and spiced, not bland nor dry.
The last tweak I made was to do muffins instead of a loaf. Muffins are easier to offload onto coworkers, for one, and for another, I needed more muffin pictures. 🙂 The batter filled 12 muffin tins almost perfectly full, and I added a dollop (about a TB, I would imagine) of the PB mixture to the top center of each, figuring it’d sink in a little. I could have tried to hide it inside by pouring half full, putting the dollop, then the other half, but who has the time? Not me.
Here’s how it looked:
The verdict? The banana bread part was, as always, fabulous. Lovely crunchy edges on the spillover (despite them being filled almost 100% full, there wasn’t much spillage – just enough), and moist, and it looks pretty enough, but the peanut-butter filling just wasn’t interesting. Sort of grainy, still, and wet. I’ve put them in the fridge overnight to see if they’ll firm up and be more interesting in the morning.
Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Filling
(from Baking Bites)
4-oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup peanut butter (pref. crunchy)
1 large egg yolk
1/4 cup granulated sugar
Kathy Tyers’ Four-Generation Banana Bread from the Philippines
(Adapted from Serve it Forth)
Ingredients:
1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour (I used white lily)
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup oil (I usually replace with unsweetened applesauce, but was out)
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
Preheat oven to 350F.
Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
Preparation:
Mash together bananas and milk until it’s ‘like a milkshake’. Leave some chunks if you like that in your final bread.
Mix together sugar, oil/appesauce, egg, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves until well mixed.
Add liquids and flour in alternating batches, ending with flour. This recipe tolerates thorough mixing quite well, but try not to overdo it. Fold in the walnuts.
Fill muffin tins almost completely full. Add to each a dollop (about 1 TB) of peanut-butter mixture.
Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes, until tester in outer edges (remember ,the middle is peanut-butter) comes out dry.
(If making an entire loaf, bake for approx. one hour)
January 13, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I wonder if confectioner’s sugar would make a difference in the filling as opposed to granulated sugar? It might lighten it up a little, kind of like when you make frosting with confectioner’s sugar and cream cheese.
January 13, 2009 at 5:32 pm
That’s a great idea – I wasn’t enthralled enough with these to make them again, but if I decide to use the same technique in something else (say, maybe a chocolate muffin), I’ll keep that in mind!
January 14, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling for Steve’s birthday a couple of years ago. I don’t remember where I got the filling recipe, but I recall it being pretty good (if I ever make them again they’re going to be mini-cupcakes though. Full-size chocolate cupcake + peanut butter filling + ganache icing = way too much!) I’ll see if I can find it at home.
January 16, 2009 at 10:05 pm
ooh, that looks fantastic! i am adding you to my google reader 🙂 i actually might make these — i luuuuuv pb.
January 16, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Oh my gosh, that is an amazingly delicious combo! Scrumptious!
January 17, 2009 at 11:18 am
These look delicious!!! I keep up with Kath’s blog but not so much recently- and I saw you all met up- I live in Raleigh!!!
I blog about my nutrition courses, healthy recipe changes etc etc . I LOVE dessert! I am so glad I found a blogger in my “area”!
January 17, 2009 at 12:32 pm
These muffins sound great! I like the filling!
January 17, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Yum! I just made peanut butter and banana cookies not too long ago and they were yummy. I’m sure the combo works great in a muffin too!