My First Edible Chocolate Muffin

Mmm...... don't these look gorgeous?

After years of disappointment, frustration, trials and failures, I did it, I've finally conquered it!

I've baked my first edible and successful muffin! Yipee!!

At least it wasn't like some of the crappy muffins I created in the past like the ones here.

So here's some helpful info about making muffins that maybe helpful to all you beginners from all those years of mistakes I've made in the past.

First of all, this is the recipe I used to make the muffin above:

Chocolate Chip Muffin

Ingredients list:

2/3 cup of baking cocoa.
2 large eggs.
2 cups of flour.
1 cup of chocolate chips.
1/2 cup of sugar.
2 teaspoons of baking soda.
1 1/3 cups of milk.
1/3 cup of vegetable oil.
1 teaspoon of vanilla.
1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Coat muffin tins with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, combine the cocoa, flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and vanilla.

Stir in half a cup of chocolate chips.

In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, vegetable oil and milk.

Add the egg, milk and vegetable oil mixture to the other ingredients until moistened.

Scoop the batter evenly into the prepared pan.

Sprinkle with the remaining chocolate chips.

Bake for about twenty minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack before removing from the pan.

Tips on what I've learnt from my errors in baking muffins:

1. Always separate the dry mixture(cocoa, flour, etc,etc...) from the wet mixture (eggs, milk, etc, etc..) before you combine them.

2. When you combine the dry with the wet mixture, do not pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture bit by bit like how you add eggs into a cake batter and stuff like that. Pour it all in one time.

3. You can make a hole in the dry mixture before you add in the wet mixture. This is called a well.

4. NEVER over stir the mixture. The maximum times you can stir is about 12 times. What I did was that once I've poured in all the wet mixture into the dry mixture, I'd let the dry mixture soak into the wet mixture before I stirred it so that I can minimize the number of times to stir.

5. What most recipes don't mention is what the mixture is supposed to look like. So the muffin mixture is supposed to be thick and lumpy, not smooth and watery. Otherwise, you'll get a sunken muffin with chocolate chips right at the bottom. Took me years to realize that.

I know some of you smart assed people may say things like "OMG, how can you not know that!?" or "That is the most basic thing. Everybody knows that!"

Well, newsflash! Not everybody knows that.

So I hope the few mistakes I've made the past few years in attempting to make a muffin would be helpful for all you beginners out there.

Enjoy your muffin! I know I did!