Bakery Style Chocolate Muffins

On Saturday morning, our housemates recruited a few people to help them plant some trees in their front yard. I love baking on the weekends and decided to whip up a treat to serve with coffee for the lovely volunteers.

I love chocolate muffins, but let's be honest about what's really happening here. We're eating cupcakes. Cupcakes filled with various chocolate chunks and chips, at around 9 in the morning. Once you face the facts on that, you can move on and just enjoy them. 

I found this recipe on the ever-so-reliable website of King Arthur Flour. I reduced the amount of sugar the original recipe called for and they were still perfectly sweet and delicious. The chocolate chips make this already-dense batter quite heavy, so make sure you give the batter a chance to rest before putting them in the oven.

Chocolate Muffins
Makes 12

2/3 cup Dutch-process cocoa (or regular, but Dutch is better!)
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips
2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons vinegar
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter
1 tablespoon coarse white or raw sugar (optional topping) 

-Preheat oven to 450 degrees and line or grease a 12 cup muffin tin. (Lower the temp to 350 right after you pop the muffin tin in, the blast of heat will help raise up the muffin top.)  

-In a large mixing bowl, whisk together cocoa powder, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and chocolate chips. Set aside.

-In a medium-sized bowl, stir together eggs, milk, vanilla, vinegar and melted butter. (Make sure the butter isn't too hot or you'll cook your egg!) Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Set aside batter and let it rest for at least 20 minutes. (Batter will be thick and dense.)

-Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, all the way up to the rim. Sprinkle with raw or coarse sugar. 

-Pop them in the oven and lower temp to 350 degrees. Cook for 16-20 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean. Allow them to cool for about five minutes before taking them out of the tin. 

Serve warm, preferably buttered and with a cold glass of milk! Yum! I'm so glad we had a house full of people to help me eat these. Also, I need to remind myself not to walk past the bakery section of Costco when I'm waiting for my prescription to be filled so I don't see a tray of chocolate muffins and then come up with an excuse to bake them. Lesson learned.