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Chocolate muffins

These are AMAZING and extremely simple, a really super treat thing when only a chocolate muffin bonanza will do.

This recipe is from the website of the excellent American food Baker Bettie, who seems from her online appearance to be a really super person and I love all her meticulous retro styling. She also very kindly converts baffling US cup measurements to grams and ml.

Anyway, here we go, this makes probably 10 muffins (note MUFFINS, not cupcakes)

Ingredients

180g plain flour

50g best cocoa

130g caster sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg

235ml whole milk

1 tsp vanilla extract (I used 1/2 because I don’t like too much vanilla extract)

120ml any vegetable oil, not olive

chocolate chips to sprinkle

1 Preheat your oven to 220C and line your muffin tray with paper cases

2 Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl, not the chocolate chips

3 Mix the wet ingredients together, with a balloon whisk is probably best

4 Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and then fold together with a spatula quickly and confidently. You will probably need only 15 turns to get this all combined. Do not worry about lumps and do not keep mixing just for the hell of it because your muffins will be rubbery if you do this.

5 Do not leave the batter sitting around. Immediately fill the muffin cups to 1cm shy of the top as muffin batter doesn’t rise very much. Sprinkle the tops artistically with chocolate chips.

6 Bake at 220C for 10 mins and then turn the oven down to 175 for 5 more minutes.

I am a crap baker at the best of times and was quite cack-handed with this recipe and it came out really, really well.

n.b. the picture on the cover was not taken by me and it is not of my muffins, but this is a very fair representation of what they looked like. I have also not stolen the photo – it is from a free web photo resource called Unsplash and the photographer is called Shakti Rajpurohit

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Comments

  1. Jess says

    March 11, 2021 at 12:35 pm

    Are the oven temps for fan assisted or non- fan assisted (not sure of the word)?

    I do love a good muffin but mine usually come out with soggy bottoms (sorry not sorry), but recently made some baked at 140 (fan-assisted) for about 20 mins and they were much better 🤔

    Reply
    • Sophie says

      March 11, 2021 at 1:05 pm

      Jess, you could also try preheating a heavy baking sheet and putting the muffin tins on that which should give you a hot blast up the muffin bottoms (utterly unrepentant) …

      Reply
      • esthermcoren says

        March 11, 2021 at 5:10 pm

        UP THE MUFFIN BOTTOMS!!! Lol sorry but that really tickled me

        Reply
        • Sophie says

          March 12, 2021 at 9:28 am

          Nothing like a gratuitous bottom to cheer the spritis.

          Reply
    • esthermcoren says

      March 11, 2021 at 5:10 pm

      hmm interesting. these are times for my fan-assisted oven. but ovens are always unpredictable and esoteric

      Reply
  2. Emma L says

    March 11, 2021 at 2:44 pm

    I’ve just made these as our afternoon homeschooling effort (I’m in Wales so 2/3 of my kids are still at home). Delicious. Great recipe and I am a crap baker. Send someone round to clear my kitchen of all the flower though eh?

    Reply
    • esthermcoren says

      March 11, 2021 at 5:11 pm

      they’re good aren’t they! like someone else made them, not us…

      Reply
  3. Nicole says

    March 11, 2021 at 5:47 pm

    Thanks they sound lovely…I’ll try them.

    Reply
  4. Kirstie says

    March 12, 2021 at 5:53 pm

    I’m moving house in a few weeks and these sound perfect for using up stuff in the cupboard without having to buy loads more stuff!

    Reply
  5. Cindy says

    March 15, 2021 at 2:40 pm

    I made these with my daughter on Mother’s Day and they were super, and bottoms as dry as a camel’s. We’ll be making them a lot, my muffins have never been very successful.

    Reply
  6. Ellie says

    March 20, 2021 at 2:25 pm

    Just gearing up to make these with my four year old. Can I just double check – 1 tablespoon of baking powder?!

    Reply
    • esthermcoren says

      March 20, 2021 at 2:54 pm

      Yes! It’s a lot but it works

      Reply

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