Yep, you read it right. Everything you ever wanted, all in one muffin. And if you’re thinking, Oreos? In a muffin? Who wants to eat Oreos for breakfast? The answer is everyone. Everyone wants an excuse to have it be socially acceptable to eat Oreos at any point during the day. For breakfast. On the treadmill. In the shower. Literally, everywhere. I was searching for some cookie inspiration in the aisles of the grocery store after tennis this morning. There was a big display of Oreos on sale so I grabbed a bag of those. When my friend Sarah and I order froyo from this place in Southie, Sarah created the best fro yo combo of vanilla froyo with extra peanut butter and extra oreo. (If wherever you live does not offer make your own frozen yogurt combo delivered to your door, you should move to Southie and order from Broadway’s Best). So I was thinking I definitely need to get that flavor combo into a cookie. And when I got home, I saw 4 giant mushy bananas on the counter that needed to be used today, so boom. Peanut Butter Banana Oreo muffins. I don’t like banana bread as much because it takes longer to cook (remember, not patient over here) and the inside of mine is always too mushy. Regular and mini-muffins are the way to go when it comes to banana bread in my opinion.

So I did some perusing on the interwebs, and came across this recipe on Something Swanky, and figured I would give it a try to adapt this into muffin form.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 2 overripe bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 16 Oreos, crushed
• 8 Oreos, crumbled for topping

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the vegetable oil, peanut butter, and sugar in a large mixer and beat on a very low speed until just combined.

Step 2: Add in the bananas, eggs, and milk and beat lightly.

Step 3: Sift together flour and baking soda, and add to the wet mixture. Beat on a low speed until the dry mix is incorporated.

Step 4: In a food processor, crush 16 Oreos until they are roughly chopped (but not necessarily super finely ground). Add the crushed Oreos to the batter and mix on low until they are evenly distributed.

Step 5: Line regular-size muffin tins with greased paper liners or grease generously. Fill the muffin cups about 1/2 way with batter. Crush about 8 Oreos a little more roughly and sprinkle on top of the batter. You can use as many or few as you want. I probably “crushed 8” meaning, I ate 3 and used the rest for the topping. yolo.

Step 6: Bake at 350 degrees for about 18-22 minutes, or until the tops of the muffins are lightly browned and they are just firm to touch. I also did a version of these in mini muffin tins, which take about 12 minutes or so. Just keep an eye on these the whole time they are baking. Every oven is different and banana bread can be tricky.

All I can say is, I think I found a cure for the Sunday Scaries and anyone at work who has a case of the Mondays tomorrow. This is one of those things you can eat without any guilt because technically, it’s a muffin, and muffins are a completely socially acceptable (and encouraged) breakfast food. I know I am mostly a cookie girl, but I have to say, this foray into muffins today has me thinking about a couple other ideas for muffins. Toasted coconut almond joy muffins anyone? Caramel Delight muffins? How about some browned butter muffins? So prepare yourself, because I think it’s safe to say muffins are coming your way in the next month or so of blog posts.

So, life. Let me just put one thing out there right now. I am pulling a Justin Bieber, and calling an early retirement from dating. I am all set with it. With this being the last week of my youth before I turn 29 next Monday, which is basically 30, which is pretty much 40, which let’s be real, is 50, and I’m single, I’m just going to try to do a mental 180 and embrace my impending spinsterhood because it has to be less painful than the dating world of 2014. I do think if someone filmed my facial expressions during last night’s not-so-great dinner date, I might be a youtube sensation. I think I kept waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind my table and tell me I was being punked. Losing 2 hours of your life on a sucko date with a karate ninja who enjoys going to work on Sundays for a few hours, is sarcastic, but not funny (at all), doesn’t really like sweets that much, doesn’t like booze (jigga whaaa??), is not sure he believes in marriage,  and strongly disklikes his brothers fiancee because she likes to take selfies ….. yeah losing 2 hours of your life on that, that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is the before and after. When everyone around you knows exactly what you should do. So here is a quick summary of the dating advice from everyone around me in case you happen to be in similar boat. This is not confusing at all:

• Just stop looking, if you stop looking, you’ll definitely find somebody
• But keep putting yourself out there. You definitely need to keep putting yourself out there
• But stop looking while you’re putting yourself out there
• If you just stop looking, that’s when it happens
• But it’s not like you can stay home, you have to go out and put yourself out there, if you’re going to meet someone when you’re not looking for it

So in summary, I hereby retire from the dating world. I hear that when you retire, that’s when you find somebody, right?

Anyways, not spending my evenings with some of Boston’s least-eligible bachelors, at least gives me more time for cookie baking. So there’s the silver lining. Last week’s browned butter cadbury mini egg blondies were such a big hit, that I had several requests to make some mid-week. My personal trainer included. So some cookies went off to my friend Jackie in Houston. And a special set were saved for my friend Sarah and her bf Jason, who often does these hilarious reviews of local pizza joints on youtube. So he did the first ever Cookie Review for The Salted Cookie. I don’t want to pat myself on the back or anything, but first try and I get a 9.8 out of 10? Crushed it.

And to wrap up the weekend with some happy thoughts. My sister who is very much into swing dancing was in Boston for a competition this weekend, so I finally got a chance to go see her swing all over the place yesterday afternoon which was nice to get to spend a little sister time together pre-sucko date night. And in ONE WEEK, these Shaw sisters will be NYC bound for my birthday on the 31st to see the Jimmy Fallon show!

Hopefully Mother Nature comes out of hibernation and realizes we are OFFICIALLY in spring and cuts the ridiculousness with this snowstorm forecast this week. How about, as a compromise for this horrendous winter, we just SKIP spring, and go right to Bank Street Beach, 80 degrees, large iced coffee in hand, and nothing to do but sit under some sunshine. I could definitely get onboard with that.