Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins

From the Ultimate Muffin Book. I made them with mini milk chocolate chips, but I think I like them better with regular semi-sweet chocolate chips.


The recipe was supposed to make a dozen muffins but it made eight muffins and six muffin tops.

Here's a better perspective of the muffin top. It's about half as tall as a cupcake-sized muffin. I guess it would be the top of a jumbo muffin if it was an actual top of a muffin.

I'm not sold on the muffin top pan yet. The first tops I made stuck to the pan. These didn't stick, but they turned out darker than the muffins even though they were baked at the same time. Maybe a 400 degree oven is too hot for the pan. Also they don't taste like the top of a muffin. They taste like a muffin baked in a shallow muffin tin.

Kelleys Island

I spent about a day on Kelleys Island. I took just a few pictures at first because it was cloudy. The next morning it was bright and sunny so I took some from the ferry as I left.

Boat dock

Kelley Mansion

Sun-kissed lake

White cranes

It was a very relaxing time. We didn't really do anything, but that was the point. It's that kind of island.

Tiger Party

Here's the cake for a baby's first birthday party. The ears are made of cupcakes so the little guy could dig in and make a mess without destroying the main cake. The cake was yellow Special Birthday Cake. The orange and white frosting was Won't Melt Whipped Creme Frosting and the brown was Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting. I frosted the cake white and handed over the decorating duties to the baby's mom. I think she did a great job.

I don't know why I thought we needed cookies in addition to the cake, but these are Swedish Sugar Cookies cut-out in the shape of no. 1 with orange frosting and chocolate sprinkles or "jimmies" to give them a tiger look. You can never have too many sweets at a party!