Peanut butter banana oatmeal muffins (gluten free)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (and again, and again), baking and I do not get along. We are like that annoying couple who hate each other, but keep trying to work it out as if things are going to change. Every time I get it in my head that baking is a good idea, I immediately regret it when I’m choking on flour as if I’m in a dust storm at Coachella.

Pretty sure the only time I’ve ever been really proud of my baking was when I was going to college in Minneapolis, I made this amazing loaf of banana bread. It had that perfectly moist texture where the top was almost sticky. I was so pumped to have my roommates try it to prove that I could actually bake, but before anyone got home my roommate’s dog jumped on the counter and ate the whole thing. All of it. Gone. You better have enjoyed that, Trooper!

Anyway, I’m not going to give up on baking. I mean, did Shaq give up basketball just because he couldn’t make a single free throw? No.

A while back I decided to try my hand at making banana muffins. I looked up a few recipes and landed on one that used ground up rolled oats instead of flour. The recipe said to grind the oats in a food processor to form a flour-like powder. Easy, right? Well, not if you don’t have a food processor. I thought, no problem, I’ll use my extremely cheap blender instead. Long story short, I’m an idiot. It is possible to use a blender for this process, but it took a long time and I ended up having to mix the rest of the batter by hand while my blender laughed at me for relying on it to do anything productive. Moral of the story, invest in a food processor.

I wanted to change up the recipe a bit to make it my own, so I threw in some peanut butter, not really knowing what would happen to the composition of the muffin–I have about zero scientific knowledge about what makes baked goods do their thing. To my surprise, they turned out quite well, fluffy with a nice, subtle peanut butter flavor. I would’ve liked them to be a touch more moist, so if anybody has any suggestions on that, I’d be happy to hear them! I only put peanut butter in half the mixture to see which ones tasted better, and hands down PB won. But feel free to omit it, if you are boring.

Enjoy.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup plain greek yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 ripe bananas
• 2-3 large spoonfuls peanut butter

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with 12 liners.

In a food processor (or a blender, if you must) pulse oats til they form a powder. Add ground oats and all remaining ingredients to a large bowl and whisk until you get a smooth batter.

Divide batter evenly between the muffin tins. Bake 15-20 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean when you insert it in the middle of a muffin.