Hello, fellow culinary enthusiast ^v^
I chose Chocolate Chip Muffins by Nigella Feasts for my first recipe review.
This was among the first dessert types of dishes I had done, me and my family loved it.
You won't have trouble following this recipe if you’re either new to the cooking world or an expert. A friend of mine gave me this recipe and those were by far the best muffins I tried and best of all they aren’t hard to make.
Ratings
Experience level: Beginner
Estimated time: 30-40 minutes
Easy to follow: Very easy
Recipe
For this recipe you will need:
For dry mixture -
250 grams of all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda - not to be confused with baking powder those are 2 different types of ingredients
2 spoons of cocoa ( I was using Lindt but you can use any you like )
175 grams of sugar
For liquid mixture -
150 grams of chocolate ( I’m using chocolate for cooking or my favorite brand of chocolate, whatever you have at home will do, you can use a bit more chocolate if you’d like )
250 ml of milk
90 ml of oil
1 egg
1 spoon of vanilla extract
Preparation
Once I had all the ingredients needed for the recipe ready on my kitchen table I heated the oven to 180 °C ( the recipe says 200 °C but 180 worked better for me)
I used a big plastic bowl to mix all of the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon.
In her recipe, she put diced chocolate as a dry ingredient and I did that the first time when I followed the recipe but then in the end, my mixture was too thick and hard to handle. So instead I put a bit of the butter in the pan on medium heat, once the butter melted I added chocolate and mixed it until it melted.
In another bowl, I put an egg and mixed it with a mixer, when I had a nice egg mixture I added periodically the other ingredients; milk, oil, and vanilla extract. Once the mix was all mixed I periodically added chocolate and mixed until I had the smooth cream.
Now the recipe says to add liquid mixture into the dry one but as I had liquid ingredients already in my mixer bowl ( and I can’t use any other bowl with this specific mixer as it’s automatic ) I added the dry ingredients to the liquid ones.
I know… blasphemy! But lemme tell you it worked just as well. I did try it the other way around, putting liquid into a dry mixture but the result was the same.
Once I had the mixture all done and ready, the next part was a bit tricky.
I put muffin cases into the muffin tray, then I had to pour the mixture into the cases that sometimes like to move around a bit. I used a ladle and very carefully moved it from the bowl to the muffin cases. I’m a bit clumsy person so you might not struggle so much xD
The recipe says to pour the mixture and that’s it, as I always love to experiment a little, I added Linolada (( a chocolate spread popular in Croatia ( see image below ), if you have Croatian/Balkan stores in your area give it a go. We like it much better than Nutella )) in the middle for half of the muffins, and for the other half, I added jam. This added more taste to them. Before I wouldn’t mix jam and chocolate but once I tried that combo it made perfect sense that they go perfectly together creating their harmony.
Once I had my muffin cases all filled up I added the tray into the oven for 20 minutes, turning it to the other side in the middle of the baking. You maybe don’t need to do that depending on your oven.
With the whole mixture I got around 18 muffins because I added toppings in the middle, without them, it would be about 12 muffins.
They were very nice, soft, and tasty when we ate them, minutes after they were done. Some say you shouldn't eat baked goods directly from the oven as it’s not good for your tummy, but we just like it that way. Besides, our tummy never complained about it. This may be true if you have a sensitive tummy.
The muffins were great even 2 days after being baked.
I absolutely love this recipe. It’s very simple to make and there is not much room where you can make mistakes, as long as you don’t overdo with the cocoa since it’s bitter so it won’t leave a great taste at the end. Don’t ask me how I know this xD
Original recipe source:
The source I used before I knew about the original source:
https://www.coolinarika.com/recept/chocolate-chip-muffins-a722bf18-63f9-11eb-a3b3-0242ac120033