Double Chocolate Muffins

Chocolate muffins seem to be infamous for being so hard to make homemade, being as most recipes tend to be on the dry side, not chocolate-y enough, or too much like a cupcake than a muffin. But, amazingly, this is only the second time I've made chocolate muffins from scratch...and I've found a wonderfully light and fluffy, chocolate-y, and non-cupcake like recipe!! This morning I decided that I wanted muffins for breakfast, but at first I wasn't quite sure what to make. I thought about maybe a spice muffin, or plain vanilla; just something simple being as I didn't have anything special like blueberries, or banana, or pumpkin, etc. But I got to thinking about a chocolate muffin, and possibly one with chocolate chips in it. Like I said before, I've tried making chocolate muffins from scratch once before with not so great results. They certainly weren't very chocolate-y and were dry even after I had added more milk than was called for. I also knew of the difficulty of finding a good chocolate muffin recipe, so I had my work cut out for me.

Finally, my searching brought me to this recipe on Allrecipes. Of course, there were a lot of mixed reviews. Some people thought the muffins were great as is, but there were a lot of people saying things like not very moist, not very chocolate-y, and too sweet. And so like my last post on the banana oatmeal cookies, I decided to take the recipe anyway and just make my own changes to it...and once again ended up with a wonderful recipe! I actually even left out the instant coffee granules I meant to put in to make it a bit more chocolate-y, but it was still a great muffin. I'm really happy that my altered recipes are coming out great here recently, because to me, that says that my baking skills are progressing. I'd eventually like to try my hand at coming up with my own recipes completely, because that seems about the ultimate test. But for now, I'll stick with my tried and true recipes/altered recipes. Now try these muffins!

Double Chocolate Muffins (adapted from Allrecipes)
This time I'm actually going to post my altered recipe instead of the original with my changes in green. I scaled down the recipe considerably since I didn't want a lot of muffins. This recipe makes 5. If you'd like to make the full recipe (about 18-20 muffins), you can double the amounts twice or times them by 4. If you'd like to see the original recipe, I linked it above.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup sifted all-purpose flour (What I actually did was fluff up the flour and then measured a scant 1/2 cup. It's probably about equal to a sifted 1/2 cup, so I put it as such to try and give a more accurate measuring. I wish I had a scale to tell you an exact measuring, but unfortunately, I don't.)
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• (Like I said, I forgot to put it in, but I think it would make the muffins even better...about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon instant coffee granules.)
• 1/4 cup plus two generous tablespoons milk
• 1 tablespoon egg (In order to measure this, crack an egg into a bowl, beat it lightly, and then measure out 1 tablespoon. If you don't want to waste the rest of the egg, you can use it to make scrambled eggs or store it in covered in the fridge for later use.)
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease muffins cups or line with paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cocoa powder, both sugars, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and coffee granules. Set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together milk, egg, oil, and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients into the dry and mix just until combined.
3. Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full. Sprinkle chocolate chips evenly on top of the muffins.
4. Bake muffins for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs adhering. Cool in the pan slightly and then remove to cooling racks. Makes 5. These muffins are great warm or at room temperature.