Banana Peanut-Butter Cupcakes

Ingredients

For Cupcakes:

2 cups moist-style yellow cake (1/2 of an 18.25 ounce box)

1 large banana, mashed

1/3 cup Gerber Bananas (or another brand of pureed bananas found in the baby foods aisle)

* I just put one banana in the blender and it pureed it :)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

For Frosting:

3/4 cup Cool Whip Free, thawed

1/4 cup reduced fat peanut butter, room temp

* I had to double this to get enough frosting for the batch. However, I did pipe my frosting too, so that uses more.

Optional Topping:

12 slices banana

dark chocolate shavings

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

In a small mixing bowl, combine butter and Cool Whip, stirring until well mixed. Refrigerate until cupcakes are ready to be frosted.

In a large mixing bowl, combine cake mix with baking powder and 1 cup water until mixed well. Add pureed bananas and stir thoroughly. Mix in mashed banana.

Line a 12-cup muffin pan with baking cups and/or spray with nonstick spray. Evenly distribute cake mixture among cups.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

Once cupcakes have cooled completely, spread frosting evenly over the cupcakes tops. Top each cupcake with a slice of banana and chocolate shavings, if you like. Refrigerate until ready to serve!

Makes 12 servings- Serving size is 1 cupcake= 150 Calories

Simply amazing! Enjoy, Kim

Yummy Peanut Butter Cookies

Makes 8 servings (3 cookies each)/ 315 Calories

Ingredients:
1 cup Natural unsalted crunchy peanut butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp. vanilla extract
all purpose flour for shaping cookies

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat several large baking sheets with cooking spray
2. Combine the peanut butter, brown sugar, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Add the egg and vanilla extact and beat until smooth
3. Shape the dough into 24 ball and arrange on the sheets. Dip the tines of a fork into flour and gently press a criss cross pattern into the top of each cookie
4. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until light browned on the bottom. Transfer to a rack o cool. Store in an airtight container at room temp. (You can always make a batch and put in the freezer to have on hand)

They are Yummy ENJOY

Our goal for this blog is to help add variety in the kitchen.

I don't know about you but most days I find myself at 4 o'clock thinking what should I make for dinner. My husband doesn't like to have the same things over and over again. So a few of us thought it would be a good idea to have a place to post recipes that we have found, tried out and enjoyed. These recipes will be coming from all over.

• The internet
• Family recipes
• Cookbooks
• Other blogs
• even some that we have created or changed on our own.

This is all new to most of us so we will be starting off slow and changing things as we go. On the righthand side we will be having links to posts for appetizers, meals, crockpot ideas, desserts, party food and even baby food.

We hope you enjoy this blog and it may help to make your kitchen have more variety too.