February is a busy birthday month in my office, so while most of the time we celebrate with cake or cupcakes, February gets a little more variety. Last week I made an assortment of scones, and this week it’s double chocolate mini muffins!
Chocolate muffins are a great birthday treat for an office – they have a denser crumb than cupcakes, so they feel like they might just have a little… fiber…. or something like that….(work with me here) to make them a somewhat healthy breakfast choice, while the chocolate-chocolate chip combo brings them right into dessert territory!
As I mentioned, our abundance of February birthdays could easily put my colleagues into treat-overload, so I broke out the mini tins for bite-sized muffins. Each one is about two little bites, making them a lovely little treat with coffee, or a decadent 3:00pm snack-break. Plus, you know my mantra: everything is cuter when it’s tiny!
The small size has one down side – you’ll need to watch the oven closely. Chocolate treats are easy to over-bake due to their color, and the small size of these only compounds the problem. Turn on your oven light and watch them like a hawk – if you get them out at just the right time they’ll have a wonderfully moist fudgey texture, but just a minute or two longer and they’ll dry out, and we absolutely cannot have that! If you’d prefer a bigger muffin, this will yield about a dozen regular sized muffins, or a half dozen jumbo (“bakery style”) muffins, but will need an extra 5-10 minutes in the oven.
I went pretty basic and tossed in regular semi-sweet chocolate chips, but I could see these being fabulous with peanut butter chips, pecans, or walnuts. At Christmastime, Andes chips or crushed peppermint would be delicious as well!
Double-Chocolate Muffins
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Ingredients
- 2 cups ultragrain flour
- 1/2 cups dutch-process cocoa powder
- 1/4 cups dark cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 eggs (large)
- 1/2 cups salted butter (melted)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
Directions
| Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl. Toss in chocolate chips and mix until coated. In a small bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, butter, buttermilk, and extracts. Add wet ingredients to dry, and mix until just blended. Do not overmix. Scoop batter into lined mini muffin tin, filling completely (a cookie scoop is good for this.) Bake at 375 for 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick tests clean. Do not overbake. Yields 60 mini muffins (12 standard muffins or 6 jumbo muffins) Adapted from Alton Brown's "I'm Just here for More Food" | |
| Photos and Recipe from Mayhem in the Kitchen! https://mayheminthekitchen.com/mini-double-chocolate-muffins/ |
