As with most food bloggers & writers, I love to bake and cook for loved ones. Whenever we have guests in town, I enjoy feeding them well. A lot of the time when I meet up with girlfriends, I’ll bring them some of my latest kitchen creations to try. I show my love for people by making them nutritious, delicious food.
When I stay at my parents’ house in Jersey, it’s fun to make snacks, dinners, and desserts for everyone to enjoy. A few weeks ago when I was there, I was a little off of my Chef Nicole game because I was under the weather, but I still whipped up some yummy recipes for them.
One night I made creamy spring veggie & asparagus puree soup for dinner, because I knew my mom would dig it (She did!).
I also made my most recently published Shape recipe, blueberry banana Greek yogurt muffins.
Continuing with the blueberry theme, I also made bluebery oatmeal chia bars one morning – except when I took the baking dish out of the oven, I mistakenly placed it on a burner that was on low heat….and then left it there for hours. I was in the kitchen the whole time and didn’t even smell the bars and pan burning because my sinuses were all congested! It actually worked out well because my dad loves burnt things. They wound up being super dry, but he was a fan of them anyways…so it was only half a kitchen fail!
Another muffin recipe that I decided to make were peanut butter & jelly banana muffins. I first shared the recipe on here years ago when I was a newbie blogger, and I hadn’t made them in quite awhile. My dad loves PB & J (and so do I!) so I thought he’d like these. I always like having muffins, bars, or energy bites around as a healthy snack, and we all snacked on these muffins throughout the week.
My baking has definitely evolved over the years, so I changed around a few of the ingredients. I constantly use oat flour instead of regular flour nowadays, so I swapped some of that + almond flour for the regular flour I originally used to make these muffins with.
I also used coconut oil instead of butter – which gives the recipe some added healthy fat, and also makes the muffins dairy free. You can use whatever flavor of fruit preserves you prefer. For this batch, I made half with raspberry and half with grape (my hubby’s jelly of choice). You get that nice little jelly center by spooning muffin batter into the cup, followed by a nice little spoonful of preserves, and then another few spoonfuls of muffin batter. Bake it for around 18 minutes, and BOOM you’ve got PB&J, in muffin form.
These muffins are a great little snack for the PB & J lover, and I think that kids will love em too. I’m sharing a few of these muffins today with a girlfriend of mine who’s a mom, so hopefully her kiddo will like them as much as I do!
I always have so much fun baking for others! I love everything you made while in NJ! I usually cook up a storm when I visit family there too 🙂 And these muffins sound awesome – anything pb&j is a hit at our house!
It’s so much fun cooking for/with family right?! PB&J is such a classic.
I am a PB&J junkie. My mom used to make grilled PB&J sandwiches for us growing up, so I’m sure I’d love these hot out of the oven! Can I still have the side of Cheetos and chocolate milk with them? 😉
OMG grilled PB&J sounds FABULOUS! I need to try that.
That is hilarious that your Dad likes burnt things! Works out well for those times when you just forget something in the oven…it’s happened to all of us! These PB&J muffins sound super fun. I was never a fan of PB & J sandwiches (I take mine sans the J), but I do like the combo in baked goods. These sound delicious…and I’m like your husband. Grape jelly all the way!!
Yeah, he’s a nut! I like things on the crispier side, but he legit loves baked good BLACKENED. It is hilarious!
I love PB&J! Will be making these for sure.
Awesome! Thanks for reading Pamela – I’m about to check out your site 🙂
When people come over I love baking/cooking for them! Everything you made sounds wonderful and these muffins are so healthy and look delicious! They’d be perfect for breakfast or snacks!
Us food bloggers definitely tend to be good hosts I think! We love food and love showing our love with food 🙂
Boom lol! I love that you used coconut oil instead of butter making these dairy free and full of healthy fat. They look and sound so good, xo
Thanks for stopping by, Cara! Yes, I love using coconut oil in place of regular oil or butter… If it’s not a huge quantity, you can’t really even taste a difference so it’s a sneaky health swap! 😉
I would have totally done the same thing with leaving the muffins on the burner and not even noticing! It’s nice that your dad preferred them that way though, lol!
These PB & J muffins look to-die-for. I could never tire of that combo. Such a classic and so good!!
Oh yea, us food bloggers probably all have those kitchen blunders from time to time right? Especially when multi-tasking, which I am a queen of! At least I didn’t set my parents’ house on fire!! Ha.