Banana Butterfinger Muffins

It’s 9pm, and I have a wicked case of the Sunday Scaries. You know what I’m talking about. When Sunday night sneaks up on you, and you realize that the weekend is over, and work is less than 12 hours away and you are just not ready for it. Especially in my case, when I have another early morning flights to the Chicago burbs. And because I left this blog post until the last minute again. And because every time I check the weather radar for flying tomorrow morning it has giant skulls with thunderstorms on it. I don’t know how I used to fly out every Monday for 2 years straight at my first job. Probably because I was young, had a lot less responsibility, and could operate on a lot less sleep. Now, as an old lady, the 4am wakeup call and battling business travelers through security lines at Logan are nothing but a big hassle.

In anticipation of these Sunday scaries, I tried to have as relaxing of a Sunday as possible today. I went for a nice (albeit chilly) run this morning and then got my baking in early this morning. I had 7 bananas that had gotten nice and mushy and were in need of being baked into a recipe. So I did some experimenting. The cinnamon chocolate chip banana streusel cake turned out great, and maybe I’ll blog that one another day, but it’s likely headed to work with Colleen this week. The Easter Bunny had brought me a basket full of baking candy last weekend, so I decided to experiment with some Butterfinger bits today. So I decided to put them into a muffin because it seemed easy enough for a Sunday.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 3 overripe bananas
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup mini chocolate chips
  • 1 cup chopped Butterfinger pieces

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together sugar, vegetable oil + peanut butter with a large wooden spoon.

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Step 2: Add in mashed bananas, eggs, milk and use some elbow grease to mix until well incorporated.

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Step 3: Sift together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, and add to the wet batter. Mix well.

Step 4: Add in chocolate chips and chopped Butterfingers.

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Step 5: Line muffin tins with paper cups and spray with non-stick spray. Fill the tins about 3/4 of the way full. Bake at 350 degrees for about 22-24 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown.

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Let these cool on a wire rack for a few minutes before serving.

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These are dense like banana bread, but the peanut butter + banana + crunchy chocolate combo is perfect for a nice breakfast to cure any case of the Mondays. My poor coworkers had to go without their sugar fix last week, so I decided to be nice and leave these muffins on my desk today so that while I am flying through the thunderstorms-of-death tomorrow morning, they will have a nice breakfast option.

If blogging was more of an easy and not weird thing to do when I was working at my first job, I would have made billions off a blog I would have called Fly Home Thursday, documenting all of the weird (and of course, hilarious) situations I found myself in during my days commuting via plane for my consulting gig. Like the time I made friends with the hotel staff at the Sheraton where I lived 4 days a week for 9 months straight – and the guest relations manager, hotel bartender + security guard rented a town car and took me out for my birthday. Or when my rental car broke down outside the King of Prussia mall in Pennsylvania but I had such bad larengitis that the Hertz people couldn’t find me to get me a new car, so the Sheraton had to drive me to work the next day. And my favorite story of all time – the ONE time I ever got upgraded to first class on a fly-home-Thursday flight home, and I sat next to a transgender who was flying for her first time as a woman. That was certainly memorable. Especially when we sat on the tarmac delayed for 2 hours, so I learned quite a lot. And when she asked me for advice on how to fit in as a woman, I told her the best womanly advice I could think of: get a real pedicure and some Spanx and you will be all set.

I guess you are bound to have some of these weird experiences traveling away from home so regularly. Luckily, my Chicago commute is not every week, but just these back-to-back weeks for website testing. Which means working around the clock and learning how little sleep you can really function on. Which gives me lots of time to think about — what life will be like when I get super famous baking cookies and my biggest Sunday Scary will be wondering what outfit to wear the next morning on my cooking show. (Hey, a girl can dream right?)

I had another story to tell you about last week, but I can’t remember anything. It might have been how operating on no-sleep means I forgot to not set the alarm Friday and was en route to rush home to meet the police at my house when the alarm company called, when my cleaning guy called to say he was at my house with the Boston police because I set the alarm by accident that morning. Woops. On the bright side, I came home to a really clean house Friday night which was nice.

And now that the weather is nicer, it is FINALLY time for some house projects, now that I have come out of hibernation from the cold. I had to work all day Saturday, which worked out since since my electrician came over and installed patio lights for me and Francesca. And since he was here, I had him install my new hallway sconces which I am pretty excited about. Not only because I didn’t have to get electrocuted trying to install them myself, but because they look pretty nice in my long hallway if I do say so myself.

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That’s all I’ve got for you this week. I’m going to attempt to fall asleep as quickly as possible before my alarm goes off. Enjoy the muffins coworkers. And let’s all cross our fingers that tomorrow’s flight is not like last Wednesday’s, where the pilot told us 10 minutes into the flight that no one could stand up for the last 90 minutes of the flight due to “severe turbulence” – with a landing that felt like a pinball machine. More motivation to get myself that cooking show, right?