Peanut Butter & Blueberry Muffins: Experimenting Without Butter

A friend messaged me on Facebook requesting a recipe. She's one of the good-natured people I met in college and had a chance to work with when I was heading one of the college student councils. She relayed to me that during their architect board exams last year, she and her board batch mates had a food-gasmic experience with peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches. They wondered how it would taste like as a cake or muffin; but they never got around to do it. She requested if I could make an experiment out of it. And the curious me was happy to, of course.

Peanut butter is made from processed dry roasted peanuts; it's pretty easy to make too. Although the term "butter" mainly refers to the dairy kind; pureed nuts, fruits and vegetables are also called butter. Since I'm preparing to bake a cake for my dad's birthday this coming week, I've been wanting to save the baking butter I had stocked. So I wondered if I could use peanut butter instead of butter? I researched online and read that vegetarians happen to substitute nut butters in place of dairy butter in baking, but most of their ingredient are hard to find. So I researched instead on a peanut butter recipes and found a nice muffin recipe from CalorieCount which uses mostly peanut butter and fresh blue berries. Since I'm skipping the butter, I'm not quite sure how the moisture from the peanut butter would fare in this recipe, so I decided to replace the prescribed amount of butter with vegetable oil instead; since it said melted butter, I guess it was ok to use oil.

But I had a problem, blueberries happen to be a bit expensive. I was doing a face-palm when I read her request because last January, my aunt brought us packs of frozen fresh blueberries from the US and we just ate them as it is. It didn't occur to me to bake it into any dish because it actually tasted pretty good by itself. I could've made some sort of jam or preserves out of them. Arrrgh... So I checked the grocery and found 3 blueberry options: jam, pie filling and preserves. I made pros and cons of each before deciding which one to pick. The jam felt like it was too sweet and felt too artificial, I wanted some bits of blueberries. Pie-filling seems to be a logical choice but costs more than the others, so I just settled for the preserves since it's costs less than the filling but has more blueberry bits than the jam.

I used brown sugar instead of white because the peanut butter and preserves were already sweet; then added a bit of vanilla and a pinch of cinnamon for more depth. It turned out okay, but not as risen as I would like them to be. I would always imagine perfect muffins to be like the ones in Starbucks.

Blueberry Streusel Muffin. Image from: www.prolocoparete.it

Mine turned out more like fat cupcakes and having smoother tops:

My peanut butter and blueberry stunted muffins. :D
apologies for the picture, my camphone is acting weird. :(

Maybe it's because of the peanut butter? or mixing it too much? or using preserves than fresh whole blueberries? or did not preheat the oven well? or maybe I put too little in each muffin pan well? I don't know. Maybe I could make just plain blueberry muffins next time to see what went wrong. I read too that the baking powder must've been old. Or maybe Starbucks use some kind of magic powder to make those bulbous muffins, since most homemade muffins turn out somewhat like mine. Oh well. It still tasted peanut-buttery good with little pockets of blueberry preserves. They're good, but not that perfect aesthetically. :)

PEANUT BUTTER & BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

2 1/1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)

1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)

1 large egg

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

3/4 cup milk

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1/3 cup blueberry preserves

PROCEDURE

*Preheat the oven to 350F and line/grease muffin pans.

1. Mix all dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon) in a large bowl. Set aside.

2. In a separate bowl, mix all wet ingredients (vanilla, egg, peanut butter, milk, butter) except preserves, until well combined.

3. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, and pour the wet ingredients in then stir until just combined.

4. Fold in the preserves, do not over fold it in! Put a spoonful into each muffin well. Better yet, do the filling method: instead of folding it in, place 1 tablespoon of peanut butter batter into the muffin well, dollop a teaspoon of preserve on top of it then cover it with another tablespoon of peanut butter batter.

5.  Bake for about 18-20 minutes or until toothpick test comes clean. Let cool.

Peanut butter happens to be a good source of resveratol, protein, vitamin B3, E, magnesium and anti-oxidants. Called the "healthy brain food", I guess it proved its worth since my friend and all her peanut butter & blueberry loving batch mates passed the board exams! UP Mindanao had a 100% passing rate! You could imagine the stress they may have encountered, but I guess with the addition of blueberries in their diet they have enough vitamin C, flavonols and phytochemicals to fight it off. Haha...

Anyway, it was fun doing this and having helped someone out of their own gustatory curiosity. 'Til next time! :)