Muffins Vol. 2

Muffins are a delicious and filling breakfast food. But when I think of muffins and/or breakfast foods, I usually do not think about chocolate. In fact, that's the last thing that I would think of. I don't understand people and the whole chocolate chip pancake thing. That just sounds kind of repulsive to me. But then again, I'm one of those people who won't eat anything breakfast-y before after the breakfast eating hours (11:30 am), and i usually don't eat anything not breakfast-y before 11:30. BUT, in my dedication to Alton Brown and his kitchen wisdom, I've committed myself to making every recipe from his baking book, cover to cover. I did the 'Old School Muffin' a couple weeks back, and this time around it's 'Chocolate Muffins #7). I did make a few minor alterations (used 2% instead of buttermilk, decreased the vanilla, used half semi-sweet chips, and half white chocolate chips). Once again, I used the large muffin tin, to make 6 large muffins instead of 12 regular sized ones. The baking time was increased substantially because of this. The finished product was nice and moist and encouraged me to drink A LOT of milk because of house rich they were. Unfortunately, they weren't much to look at:

Chocolate Muffins #7
Adapted from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food
2 c. all purpose flour
0.75 c. cocoa powder
1 Tbsp. baking powder
0.50 tsp. baking soda
0.50 tsp. salt
1.25 c. sugar
1 stick melted butter, slightly cooled
2 large eggs
1 c. 2% milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
0.50 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
0.50 c. white chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease muffin tin. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together sugar, butter, eggs, milk, vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips. Divide batter into muffin tin, cups should be full. Place in oven and increase temperature to 400 degrees. Bake 18-20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Alton recommends tipping the muffins onto a cooling rack as soon as they come out of the oven, to give the bottoms a kind of crust, but I don't really like that, and leave them in the pan to cool.

The muffins are decent at room temperature, but much better warm, with a BIG glass of milk.

Other projects I have going on right now: my take on Bon Appetit's latest issue's "Around the World in 80 Dogs". Some of the ideas just sound repulsive and unbearable, so I switched them up, and added the Chicago style. I can't believe those bastards left it out!! Also, coconut popsicles. I made them, but they're stuck in the molds....