Triple Chocolate Muffins

Anyway, the dessert for today is Triple Chocolate Muffins, hehe. This is another recipe that I've been eyeing but haven't gotten the chance yet. Like most muffin recipes, it sounded really easy and hey... who can resist TRIPLE chocolate? :) So, here we go!


What you need:
300g plain chocolate, chopped
50g unsalted butter, melted
1 egg
350ml milk
375g self-raising flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
50g cocoa powder
100g caster sugar
100g white chocolate buttons, chunks, chips, etc
Dark brown sugar, for sprinkling (optional)

What you do:

1. Line a (12-cup) deep bun tin with paper muffin cases.
2. Melt half the plain chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, then stir in the melted butter. (I just melted both of them together in a microwave.)
3. Beat together the egg and the milk and stir the mixture into the melted chocolate.
4. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl. Stir in the sugar.
5. Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients, then stir in the remaining chocolate and the white chocolate pieces.
6. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold the ingredients together until just combined. Divide the mixture among the paper cases. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the tops, if using. Bake in a preheated oven, 200 C, for 20-25 minutes until well-risen and just firm. Serve the muffins warm or cold.

On a note, the recipe was supposed to make 12 muffins, but I got 18 out of it. Hence the bracketed 12-cup. I stored the rest in the fridge while I was baking the first batch. Not sure if I should have done that, but oh well. Didn't see a big difference :)

Anyway, I finally managed to find baking cocoa, hoho. As a result, these muffins were a much more pleasing brown colour than the last ones. And the brown sugar crust on top was, as usual, fantastic. Made it really crunchy :D Just look at the muffin! Dark brown with golden specks. Beautiful! Hadi doesn't really like it though, so I made some without. Oh well, its up to your tastes, I guess.

Unfortunately, the sugar topping was the highlight of the muffins. The rest of the muffin (to me and Justin) was very dry and tasteless, barely even sweet. The other two found it really good though. Maybe the chocolate pieces were a bit unevenly distributed, but still... the muffin dough minus the chocolate should still be tasty. It is, after all, a big part of the muffin. That was a big disappointment :(

Although, it could be my fault. I made a few mistakes. :P
One, the recipe called for plain chocolate. I did NOT realise this until I was writing the recipe up, and used milk chocolate instead. Less chocolate flavour = possible less flavoursome muffin, I guess.
Two, I added the melted chocolate to cold milk. Yes, AGAIN (melted chocolate into cold cheese in chocolate cheesecake). As you would expect, some of the chocolate solidified instead of becoming chocolate flavoured milk. Might lessen the flavour, as well.
Three, I did not combine it enough. I am paranoid about overmixing muffins (from the first time I tried to make muffins - unblogged, hehe :P), but when I got to the bottom of the mixing bowl, there was a whole lot of flour still at the bottom. Argh, such a novice mistake! This means that there was too much liquid compared to solid in the first 12 muffins, which may have adversely affected the texture.

But anyway...

I definitely much preferred the dough of the double chocolate cheesecake muffins. Those were soft and fluffy. These were fluffy as well, but more crumbly and lacked some taste (unless you had a lot of chocolate pieces in it). They weren't *bad*, just not as good as expected. It might possibly have been because of the silly things I did (or didn't, hehe) do, so this recipe is still worth a try for those of you who are curious. :)

Oh, for dinner today, Hadi decided to make another Honey Chicken roast, only this time he forgot to put in herbs, and instead of mushrooms, he roasted halved onions instead. The rest was exactly the same, so I won't be putting in the recipe, hehe. And yes, I know the chicken looks a bit burnt. He forgot to check on the chicken - it could've used 5 minutes less in the oven. Otherwise, the chicken was still nice and tender, although it could've used some marination.

Quote of the day: Carob is a brown powder made from the pulverized fruit of a Mediterranean evergreen. Some consider carob an adequate substitute for chocolate because it has some similar nutrients (calcium, phosphorus), and because it can, when combined with vegetable fat and sugar, be made to approximate the color and consistency of chocolate. Of course, the same arguments can as persuasively be made in favor of dirt.