Guest Author - Deborah Markus

Peanut butter and chocolate are a natural pair. Dark chocolate and the smooth, sweetened peanut butter you should save for special occasions.

Peanut butter, like chocolate, can be good for you in small doses.

It's a natural source of vitamin E, it's loaded with monounsaturated fats -- the kind that lower "bad" cholesterol -- and according to an article on WebMD, women who eat peanut butter regularly may cut their chances of developing type 2 diabetes.

The easiest way to get that wonderful taste of peanut butter and chocolate is to keep a bag of chips next to a jar of peanut butter in the cupboard. Dip a spoon into one and then the other. Repeat as necessary.

If you're willing to do a little more work, here's a recipe for peanut butter-chocolate chunk muffins.

I've been having a hard time finding chocolate chunks, as opposed to chips, at the grocery store. It's a shame, because they're far more suitable for muffins and dried-fruit cookies.

Make your own, if you can't find them for sale. Just get a good, thick bar of good-quality dark chocolate. For the chopping part, I've had good luck with a smallish, serrated knife -- not too sharp.

Here's what I found with the commoner brands:

The Ghirardelli bars are wonderful, but too thin to make a good, rugged chunk. Save them for eating or melting.

The big, half-pound bar of Hershey's Special Dark isn't firm enough to make a good, satisfying chip-chunk.

Baker's Semi-Sweet chocolate is wonderfully mild and sweet, with a terrific texture, but it's so thick that it's hard to chop it without risk to life and limb.

Hershey's Semi-Sweet baking chocolate is a little too sweet, and the foil-wrapped pieces, though tempting to the hungry, are too thin for our purposes here.

Baker's German's Brand Sweet Chocolate Bar is perfect in every respect: good taste, good texture, and the perfect thickness for chunks. Buy one four-ounce bar, and chop it into good-sized chunks.

After preheating your oven to 400 degrees, whisk together in a large bowl two cups of flour, ¼ cup brown sugar, ½ cup white sugar, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, and ½ teaspoon salt.

This part takes a little time and a lot of patience: in another bowl, beat together one cup of smooth, sweetened peanut butter (I used Skippy), and 1 1/3 cups milk. When these are smooth, beat in ¼ cup melted butter and 2 beaten eggs.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Before the flour mixture is completely incorporated, pour in the chocolate chunks and any chocolate dust you may have raised making them. Stir just until the flour disappears.

Bake in greased, standard-sized muffin tins for about fifteen minutes. Let them cool in the tins for several minutes, then remove them to a rack to finish cooling.

This recipe makes about 16 muffins that are a bit rich for an ordinary breakfast. Save them for holiday mornings and afternoon teatimes.