Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

I have a pretty serious addiction to bananas. I start every day with green tea and a banana and have done this for as long as I can remember. 

I love Costco because I can get a large bundle of bananas for less than $2. Sometimes though, they can get brown quickly. And I honestly won't eat ripe a banana. I like them when they're still a little green. Which means I make banana bread and muffins quite frequently. This recipe uses Pamela's Gluten Free Baking and Pancake Mix. It's really easy and quick to make. Someone bought this flour for me and unfortunately it contains Dairy. I like baking and am used to not being able to eat everything I make at this point. Therefore, I made these and then gave them to a few friends, some gluten free and some not. I wouldn't be posting this if they didn't approve. 

Ingredients:

- 1 1/4 cup Pamela's Gluten Free Baking and Pancake Mix 

- 1 egg

- 1/4 cup water

- 1/4 cup sugar (Could also use 1/3 cup honey- I've made them both ways and both turned out great)

- 1 tsp gluten-free vanilla

- 3 ripe bananas (or 1/2 cup fruit of your choice)

- 1/4 cup chocolate chips (could eliminate or substitute with your favorite nuts)

Recipe:

Pre-heat oven to 350. Mix all ingredients together then add to muffin tins. Bake for 15-20 minutes. And that's it! Enjoy :-) 

[Easy] Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Pretzel Sandwiches!

I decided to make a batch of each gluten-free and gluten-filled chocolate covered peanut-butter pretzels during a weekend trip to the Poconos with a group of friends. You can never go wrong with a combination of pretzels, peanut-butter and chocolate.

Ingredients
One small bag of Gluten-free pretzels
One larger bag of regular pretzels (I chose a shape that allowed me to make a sandwich with peanut-butter)
2 cups skippy peanut butter
(Skippy because it was labeled gluten-free)*
One bag of semi-sweet chocolate chip

*I previously made these but added powered sugar and butter to the peanut-butter. To be honest, I couldn't tell a difference without the extra sugar and calories.  

Recipe:

I lined two cookie sheets with wax paper and began to melt the chocolate chips in a double broiler. While they were melting, I placed two pretzels together with a small amount of peanut butter in between. I started with the gluten-free ones so I didn't contaminate the chocolate or peanut butter. I filled up about a half of one cookie sheet with the peanut-butter gluten-free pretzel sandwiches. By that time, the chocolate was melted (I had to stir the chocolate every once in a while). I dipped the peanut-butter sandwiches in the chocolate, while also using a spoon to help drizzle it onto the sandwiches, and then replaced them onto the wax-papered cookie sheets. I repeated until all gluten-free peanut-butter sandwiches were dipped in chocolate and then moved onto to doing the same thing with gluten-filled pretzels. Using the gluten-filled pretzels, I filled up the entire cookie sheet.



I allowed the pretzels to cool on the counter before placing in two separate containers. They were quite delicious and didn't last long at the Poconos!