Welcome Back Muffins

by admin

Happy New Year! So sorry for the long break from posting recipes here on the blog. Our family has been struck with the first full year of school immune system boost aka we have been so sick since Thanksgiving that not much has been getting accomplished. This is our first full week of health in a while and Im jumping on it with gusto!

While I was grocery shopping on Monday, I kept circling back to the bakery section and eyeing the muffins. As I weighed the options and the prices, I realized that I usually buy muffins and then throw most of them away because they are never as good as they look. So I went home and knew that I could find a recipe to could make that would satisfy my muffin craving. I went to a recipe that I had pinned on Pinterest from the website Cleobuttera. The muffins were titled Unbelievable Chocolate Chip Muffins, they looked buttery, sweet and richly chocolaty. Luckily, they turned out to be just that!

The ingredients needed for the recipe are 3/4 cup of room temperature butter, 1 cup of room temperature greek yogurt*, 2 room temperature eggs, 2 teaspoons vanilla, 2 cups all purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup mini chocolate chips. I put a handful of the chocolate chips to the side to sprinkle on the muffins before going into the oven. *The recipe calls for sour cream but I did not have any on hand so I substituted in vanilla greek yogurt*.

The first steps to the recipe is to preheat the oven to 400 F degrees. Next, combine the dry ingredients flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, in a bowl and whisk them together. Then, add the room temperature butter to the bowl of the stand mixer with the paddle attachment and mix it for a minute until it is soft. Add the sugar to the bowl and turn the mixer back up to medium high and mix for a full 5 minutes. The butter mixture should be light in color and texture after the 5 minutes.

Next, I added the eggs to the bowl one at a time and mixed for a minute after each one is added. Then I added the vanilla and mixed it until it was fully incorporated.

The dry ingredients are added in thirds, with half the yogurt added between each addition of the dry ingredients. The addition order is flour, yogurt, flour, yogurt, flour. Each addition is only mixed until it disappears in an effort to not over mix the batter. Over mixed batter can make for tough muffins.

After the last of the flour is mixed in, pull the bowl off the mixer and use a spatula to gently stir the mini chocolate chips into the batter. Then using a large cookie scoop, scoop the batter into extra large muffin liners in a 12 muffin tin. Sprinkle the extra chocolate chips on top of each muffin before putting them in the oven for 22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs.

It is important to try not to over bake the muffins so that they do not dry out. As you can see above, my muffins dumped over the side a little bit from overfilling, but no one ever complains about some extra muffin to nibble on.

These muffins are so tender and delicious, that I packed up the majority of them for Kevin to take to work. I knew that I could eat all of them, in basically the next 2 3 daysjust one nibble at a time. One of the best things about using the mini chocolate chips in these muffins is that they dont need to be covered with flour before being added to the batter. They do a great job staying scattered throughout the muffins so that there are delicious bites of chocolate all throughout the muffin. I hope that these muffins grace your kitchen this new year, you wont be disappointed and neither will anyone you share them with!

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup room temperature butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 room temperature eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 2 cups all purpose flour (scooped and leveled)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 cup greek yogurt or sour cream
  • 1 cup chocolate chips (keep a few to the side to sprinkle on top before baking)

Instructions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 F degrees and line a 12 muffin tin with extra large muffin liners.
  2. In a small bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt set aside.
  3. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment mix the butter until smooth and soft. Add the sugar and mix for a full 5 minutes on medium high until the mixture is light in color and texture.
  4. Add the eggs one at a time and mix for a minute after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix until throughly mixed incorporated.
  5. Add a third of the dry ingredients to the mix and only mix until the dry ingredients are no longer visible. Then add half the yogurt again until it is just no longer visible. Continue with the flour, then yogurt and end with flour. Be careful not to over mix.
  6. Pull the bowl off the mixer and add most of the mini chocolate chips and mix in with a spatula.
  7. Scoop the mix into the prepared muffin tin and sprinkle the extra chocolate chips on top.
  8. Bake for 22 minutes or until a tester comes out with only a few crumbs. Try not to over bake the muffins.
  9. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then take the muffins out and allow them to finish cooling on a cooling rack.
  10. Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Cleobuttera Unbelievable Chocolate Chip Muffins

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