Chocolate Muffins

Bahhh.. was still feeling the after effects of having a bad week, so i decided to bake something just to try and start this week off well. Was surfing through recipes in office today, and suddenly chanced upon this recipe for chocolate muffins and thought Id try it. Can't really bake anythign complicated since its a weekday and I have to fight with everyone else for the kitchen. (my kitchen is way too small for 3 people at once, esp when there are dishes to wash after dinner )

Ok, before I start rambling, here are the pics of my muffins :

I think i screwed up all my proportions for this recipe alot.haha. Firstly cause it gave everything in cups, which I totally have no idea how to measure accurately, and also, I only wanted to use half the recipe, but I kept screwing up my calculations, esp with the chocolate, where I was supposed to half the amount again to melt, but forgot to do so. Also, I did not want to open a new stick of butter, so i ended up estimating with what I had left from last time. Well, in all, considering all this, it tastes pretty ok, quite chocolatey, but not sweet enough, since my Mum said my stuff always turns out too sweet, so I controlled my sugar alot this time as well, and I ended up adding too little =X. I think I might have overbaked them, or overbeat them, or added too little milk/butter or added too much cocoa, coz the muffins are soft and seem moist, but are quite drying when I tried one, not very sure about all the theory behind chocolate muffins, haha, but I swear in time I will finally bake something that is so perfect that I cant complain about it. Its kinda demoralising that I bake so much stuff and all of it seems to have shortfalls. I WANT TO MAKE DELICIOUS AND PERFECT FOOD!

Oh, something I learnt from this recipe is about buttermilk, apparently, to make that, I just need to add vinegar to fresh milk, which does not make any sense at all to me, buttermilk sounds like it would be a more buttery and rich milk, not anything to do with vinegar! But well, thats what all the baking sites say, so I just follow. I gotta go and research more to find out how it affects the stuff I bake, really have no idea about it, and http://www.joyofbaking.com/ does not have an entry to explain it, so I need to search further.

Aside from the amazing difficulty I had in getting the right amounts of each ingredient, this recipe was quite simple, I went to ask my maid to get ready the mixing machine for me, only to realise its not even needed at all, just melt the butter and chocolate, sift the dry stuff, mix the buttermilk, and combine it all together. I think I overbeat it, which of course, is another bad habit i need to fix. But, at least it was quite exciting to end up having to estimate every ingredient, and figure out how to compensate for having too much chocolate/too little butter/ extra egg and more. Tomorrow I start reading my book on baking science and theory, so hopefully once I am done with it, Ill be able to understand how everything works, instead of just following recipes blindly.

Alright, baking at night is quite tiring, so I am going to stop here, its like a mad rush, I have to squeeze around in the kitchen coz all the after dinner cleaning is going on, then I have to get all the cleaning done before my parents want to off the alarm and stuff or I might end up attracting all kinds of stuff into my kitchen, and I definitely do not want that.

Heres the recipe, courtesy of 'slowlikehoney' at http://slowlikehoney.net/2008/04/13/recharged/ , who for some reason, I imagine to be really nice and that I can relate to ( seriously,dont ask me why), haha. I melted down all my chocolate left, so I added hershey's semi-sweet chocolate chips to my muffins just for a stronger flavour =) ( I hope its ok to just paste someone else's recipe here as long as I put a link to them, not sure on the etiquette on all this )

Chocolate-Chocolate Chunk Muffins from Baking: from my home to yours
Ingredients:

3/4 of a stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

2 cups all-purpose flour2/3 cup sugar1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

1 large egg

2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions:Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.Melt the butter and half the chopped chocolate together in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water; or do this in a microwave. Remove from the heat.In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, egg and vanilla extract together until well combined. Pour the liquid ingredients and the melted butter and chocolate over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough-a few lumps are better than overmixing the batter. Stir in the remaining chopped chocolate. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin molds.Bake for 20 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.
Yields 12 regular sized muffins, 24 if you use mini muffin tins.