If you’re anything like me, you often have a number of overripe bananas on the counter. Since I live by myself, I have a hard time eating up a bunch of bananas before they get too ripe to eat. I also end up throwing them away a lot because I don’t get around to baking with them either. (I really need to learn to at least get them in the freezer!) This time, however, I was determined to make something with my bananas rather than throwing that money in the trash. I went looking for a chocolate chip banana muffin recipe I remembered seeing last week. While I searching, I found this recipe instead. Search over, previous recipe completely forgotten! It didn’t hurt that I also had strawberries in the fridge that were starting to look pretty sad!

Technically, these would need to have pineapple in them to be actual Banana Split Muffins, but since they contain bananas, strawberries and chocolate chips, they seem close enough to a banana split in muffin form to me! Banana split muffin is also much easier to say than strawberry, banana, and chocolate chip muffins.

These came together really quickly and easily. It took me maybe 30 minutes from the time I pulled out the ingredients until I pulled them out of the oven and turned them out on a wire rack to cool. I ate one for breakfast this morning, saved a few for pictures, and took the rest to roller derby practice for the girls. The muffins got pretty good reviews, and they were up against fresh baked brownies, still warm from the oven that someone else brought!

I ate one as is, but I have to say, it would have been really good warmed in the microwave for a few seconds with some butter slathered on it. Mmmm! I will definitely be making these again in the future. Probably the next time I have bananas and strawberries on the verge of going bad at the same time!

Banana, Strawberry and Chocolate Chip Muffins
Source: For the Love of Cooking

½ cup of butter, softened
¾ cup of brown sugar
2 eggs
3 overripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
10-12 fresh strawberries diced
1/2 cup of chocolate chips (I used mini chocolate chips!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees then coat a muffin pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs, bananas, and vanilla then continue beating until well combined.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together, mix well. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and stir until just combined. Add most of the diced strawberries and most of the chocolate chips then gently mix them into the batter.

Spoon the batter evenly into each muffin tin. Place the remaining strawberries and chocolate chips on top of each muffin.Place into the oven and bake 18-20 minutes or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the muffins cool on a rack.

We are rapidly approaching the end of comfort food season. In fact, in my area of Indiana, we are at the beginning of an unseasonably warm week! This makes me happy because my roller derby team is participating in the St. Patrick’s Day parade on Saturday, and I am very much looking forward to not nearly freezing to death like we did last year. All this to say, I’m glad I made this soup last week!

But maybe it’s still chilly where you are, and you’re wanting a nice, comforting bowl of soup. If so, you are in luck! I bookmarked this recipe ages ago, and finally decided to pull it out. I love baked potato soups, but most of the recipes I’ve found are rather difficult, or at least involved. Not the case with this one! The best thing about this recipe though is how adaptable it is! I included the original recipe at the bottom of the post here, as always, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: That’s not exactly how I made my soup! *gasp* I know those of you who have been around with me for a long time are probably shocked, me being the dirty little recipe follower that I am.

I’m not crazy about onions, so instead of including the chopped onion that is called for, I shook in a bit of dried minced onion. I also just shook in some pepper instead of measuring, and added a shake or two of garlic powder while I was at it. Garlic makes everything better. The biggest change I made? When it was time to add the cream cheese, I also added about half of a 3oz package of real bacon pieces. Ohhh yeah! I topped my serving off with some cheddar cheese and sour cream. It was super easy to make and crazy delicious! I’ll definitely be making this one again.

And just a tip I picked up from reading the comments on the original recipe: some people had issues with getting the cream cheese to melt. Based on their suggestions, I made sure my cream cheese was super soft, and then I whirled it around in my mini processor with a little bit of the hot soup before adding it to the crockpot. It worked perfectly. I think the only thing I’d do differently next time is stick my immersion blender in there for a bit.

Crockpot Potato Soup

Source: Pearls, Handcuffs & Happy Hour

1 30oz. bag of frozen, shredded hash browns
3 14oz. cans of chicken broth
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1 pkg. cream cheese, NOT fat free

In a crockpot, combine everything EXCEPT for the cream cheese. Cook for 6-8 hours on low heat. About 1 hour before serving, add cream cheese and keep heated until thoroughly melted. Serve with cheese, sour cream, bacon bits, green onions, or whatever else you think would be good!!

You may have noticed by now that I generally take my baked goodies to work to foist off on my coworkers. Well, one of my coworkers in particular has been asking me to make “those chocolate covered peanut butter rice krispie things” for a couple of months now… I finally decided to go ahead and fulfill his request, but I’d never made them before, and I didn’t have a recipe. A quick google search turned up “chocolate scotcharoos” on the Rice Krispies website.

They certainly looked like the right thing, I just wasn’t too sure about the butterscotch chips that the recipe called for in the chocolate layer. However, I decided that if some peanut butter is good, then more peanut butter was better. So I swapped the butterscotch for peanut butter. I actually ended up using a bag of Nestle’s chocolate and peanut butter chips, mostly because they were on sale.

These treats ended up being super easy to make… I think the hardest part was cutting them in pieces once they were done. (We won’t talk about the fact that my kitchen floor is STILL sticky.) I recommend lining the pan with parchment paper, and then spraying down the whole mess with cooking spray before you get started. It will make your life much easier later! I think I cut the treats into 32 pieces, but they were super rich, so you would be fine to cut them even smaller!

As always, I took them to work, and everyone RAVED about them. I actually had to cut some people off because they ate so many in one sitting! I still don’t know how they did– I was in a sugar coma after eating just one!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats
Adapted from: Rice Krispies

1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter
6 cups rice krispies
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter chips (I used one bag of the chocolate and peanut butter chips)

1. Place corn syrup and sugar into 3-quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sugar dissolves and mixture begins to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter. Mix well. Add KELLOGG’S RICE KRISPIES cereal. Stir until well coated. Press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray. Set aside.

2. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips together in 1-quart saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Spread evenly over cereal mixture. Let stand until firm. Cut into 2 x 1-inch bars when cool.

Note: Before measuring the corn syrup, coat your measuring cup with cooking spray–the syrup will pour easily out of the cup.