Banana Wildberry Explosion Muffins

Those of you that know me know that I love the kitchen. I love cooking, baking, and I LOVE recipes. I could read recipe books (or watch the Food Network) all day. I love trying new recipes, and modifying recipes to fit whatever ingredients I have on hand. And I rarely measure ingredients when I cook (but always when I bake). Usually this method of cooking turns out pretty good, sometimes it's fantastic, and once in a while it's a complete disaster.

The ironic thing is that my Mom also cooks without recipes (or uses recipes as *guides*) and this used to drive me crazy when I was younger. Now when my Mom sees me cook like this she just laughs. I'll probably share a few recipes on here every once in a while. I'll try to post ones that are fairly edible, but try them at you're own risk :)

Today I had some over-ripe bananas and 1/2 a can of wildberry pie filling to use up. So I modified a favourite banana bread recipe and came up with this. If you don't have pie filling on hand, you could add 1 cup of blueberries to the batter instead.

Banana Wildberry Explosion Muffins

4 ripe bananas
3 eggs
1/3 cup shortening (could use softened butter)
1 cup white sugar (I might cut this down next time as they were very sweet)
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup unsweetened applesauce (this is a great substitute for oil and fats in baking)
1 Tbsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 can wildberry pie filling

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease muffin tins or line with muffin cups. Mash bananas in a medium bowl and stir in eggs until well blended. Cream shortening and sugars. Add vanilla and banana mixture and mix well. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Blend into batter (don't overmix).

Spoon a small amount of batter into muffin cups. Scoop 1 Tbsp pie filling into centre of batter. Spoon additional batter on top of pie filling, until muffin cups are almost full.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until muffins are done. Enjoy!