I am actually surprised by how few times in my life I have made muffins. Back before I even started learning how to bake, my sister would make these banana-Nutella muffins all the time, so you would think that I would have taken my hand at something similar, but I guess I just haven’t felt the need to – probably because I don’t eat that many muffins these days, and if I were to, it just seems so much easier to just buy them than to make them. But since I felt like my blog has been sorely lacking muffin recipes, and because I felt like being the muffin man today, I decided to take a stab at it. A lot of recipes online for muffins call for basically the same ingredients as a cupcake. To the point where it looked like they were basically making cupcakes, without the frosting. But that just sounded wrong. For one, I personally find muffins to have a firmer, denser texture than a cake. Secondly, I feel like they should be at least somewhat healthier. Even if by just a little bit. So I opted to use whole wheat flour for this recipe for the healthier aspect, and for a firmer texture, cultured dairy can help accomplish that, and I remember my sister used sour cream in her banana-Nutella muffin batter, so I chose to use whole fat Greek yogurt in mine!

Now that I have settled on a base recipe for my muffins, the next thing was the flavor profile. I thought it would be a fun idea to tackle something more nostalgic, so I went with a peanut butter-chocolate swirl. But since I was able to find peanut butter chips from the grocery store, I wanted to have even more fun with that, by incorporating peanut butter chips into a chocolate dough, and dark chocolate chips into a peanut butter dough! That way, between the two, you can get both flavors running through the muffin as you eat it. I batched out the below recipe in a way where you mix your dry and wet ingredients separately, divide the mixtures into two, and then you can effectively make two batters that way. I highly recommend getting a measuring scale so that you can be very accurate with your portioning. Alternatively, you can also double the recipe, which will result in 18 to 20 muffins, and that might actually be a little bit easier – the only reason why I didn’t is because not everyone owns more than one cupcake tin, and usually a cupcake tin is limited to 12, so that could be a pain to wait for the muffins to bake and cool before adding in the next round of muffins to the pan and oven. I am speaking from personal experience on that, of course, but I circumvented that issue entirely by using those cute box-shaped cupcake liners instead. These muffins are quite tasty and customizable, and if you love peanut butter and chocolate, you will surely love these muffins as well!

Makes 10 muffins:
1 cup whole-wheat flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
2oz dark chocolate chips
2oz peanut butter chips
2oz cocoa powder
1/4 tsp instant coffee
2.5oz yogurt
3oz sugar
1/3 cup buttermilk(can be made with milk, just add 1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar)
2oz canola oil
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
3oz peanut butter

In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Divide the flour mixture into two parts. To one part, add in the dark chocolate chips. To the other part, add in the peanut butter chips, cocoa powder, and instant espresso. Toss the chips in the dry mixtures, just to coat them in the flour – this will help prevent them from sinking in the baking process! In another bowl, mix together the yogurt, sugar, buttermilk, canola oil, egg, and vanilla to form your wet ingredients. Divide that the wet ingredients into two parts, and whisk into one part the peanut butter. Pour the peanut butter mixture into the bowl containing the dark chocolate chips to form your peanut butter-chocolate chip batter. Then do the same with the regular dry ingredients with the bowl containing the cocoa powder-flour-peanut butter chip mixture to form your dark chocolate batter with peanut butter chips. Fill 10 cupcake liners with both batters. Bake these muffins at 350 degrees F for 22 minutes.